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Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 15:06:13 +0200 (CEST)
From: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
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To: Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com>
Cc: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>,
	Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au>,
	Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>,
	PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: 7.4 compatibility question
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Neil Conway writes:

> So I think we could make the release notes more useful if we provided a
> bit more detail in each entry, and documented changes more extensively.
> We could also make better use of SGML, for example by adding <xref>s to
> the release notes where applicable. I think we also need to *really*
> maintain the release notes incrementally during 7.5 development, rather
> than having Bruce summarize the CVS logs at the end. IMHO, every patch
> that makes a significant change should update the release notes, when
> the patch is applied.

I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have
been, er, boycotting it.  I think, too, that release notes *must* be
written incrementally at the same time that the feature change is made.
This is the only way we can get accurate and complete release notes, and
the descriptions could even include some context, some motivations, etc.
We have release cycles of 10 months, and there is no way we can make
sensible release notes by gathering individual commit messages over that
period of time.  Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and
there is no mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit "Add
Informix mode."

I suggest we just do it like the documentation:  If you don't document it,
it doesn't exist.  If you don't write a line for the release notes, it
doesn't exist either.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net