Re: No Issue Tracker - Say it Ain't So!

Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> writes:
> On 2015-10-01 11:07:12 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>> As one of the people who do most of the gruntwork for release notes,
>> I can tell you that that sort of fixed-format annotation is useless
>> and usually annoying. I can see what branches you fixed the bug in
>> anyway, from git_changelog's output.

> I know that I very frequently wish that information were in the commit
> messages in a easily discernible way.

I'm inclined to think that commit messages are not really the right medium
for that at all. Commit messages ought to be primarily text for
consumption by humans. If we had a tracker, I think that it would be the
place for fixed-format metadata, such as "fixed in version(s) x,y,z" and
"fixed by commit(s) aaa,bbb,ccc". Expecting the tracker to link to the
commit rather than vice versa would also solve a bunch of other problems
like assigned-after-the-fact bug numbers. Not to mention plain old
mistakes: once committed, a log message is immutable, but a tracker could
be updated as needed.

If this process actually works, I could see the tracker becoming the
source material for generating release notes, at least for bug-fix
notes. We do it off the commit log now because that's all we've got,
but the log isn't really ideal source material.

regards, tom lane