Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 18:34:20 +0100 (CET)
From: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
To: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Cc: Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>,
	<pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: 7.4 compatibility question
In-Reply-To: <200310261344.h9QDirp13426@candle.pha.pa.us>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0310301831120.2800-100000@peter.localdomain>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Bruce Momjian writes:

> Bug tracking systems have the same limitation as incremental release
> notes --- youi have to do a lot of piecemeal work to get complete output
> at the end, rather than doing it more efficiently in one batch.
>
> Most people working on PostgreSQL are volunteers, and one of my primary
> jobs is to make it easy for them --- if it takes me a week to get the
> release notes together --- so be it --- I am making it easier for
> others.

That is not the scalable community approach that has been successful in
other areas of development.  You might as well say, "Just tell me all the
features you need and I'll implement them."  Now *that* would make it easy
for other people.

Once upon a time we thought that documentation wasn't important or that is
was hindering people to get involved.  I think that has largely been
disproven and we have been very successful with the "document the code
when you write it" approach.  The same approach can be used for the
release notes.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net