Re: Patch to git_changelog for release note creation

Robert Haas wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 9:59 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> > Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> writes:
> >> I would like to apply the attached patch to git_changelog for use in
> >> creating the major release notes. ?I specifically added these flags:
> >
> >> ? ? --author-after ?Show author after the commit
> >> ? ? --master-only ? Show commits made exclusively to the master branch
> >> ? ? --reverse-order Show commits in reverse date order
> >
> > Your implementation of --master-only seems really grotty. ?Can't you
> > just add "origin/master" to the basic git log command?
>
> No, he wants to exclude things that were back-patched. But I agree
> it's kind of grotty. Imagine you are preparing release notes for a
> minor release. Now you will want all the back-branch commits, but not
> the ones that were only committed to master. I think rather than
> inserting piecemeal hacks like this, we should try to be a bit more
> generic, something like -x branchname to exclude any commit that
> touches the named branch, and -o branchname to restrict the output to
> commits that touch ONLY the named branch, or something along those
> lines.

Sure, that works for me. We can always improve what I have done.

> > As for --reverse-order, what's that got to do with preparing release
> > notes? ?The end product shouldn't be particularly sensitive to the order
> > of commit of features ...
>
> True...
>
> And I can't say I like --author-only much, either. I understand its
> use for preparing release notes, but I don't really like the idea of
> adding something to the tool that solves 1% of the problem of
> automating release note generation. I'm afraid that in a few major
> releases the documented method of preparing release notes will look
> like this:
>
> src/tools/git_changelong --master-only --author-after --reverse-order
> --omit-commit-ids --omit-dates --another-switch-bruce-invented
> --more-magic --additional-sorcery --fix-other-things
> --some-more-tweaks --etc-etc-etc
>
> At which point we will have successfully automated roughly 8% of the
> work of release note generation and reduced the source code to utter
> unmaintainability.

Well, I need it for the release notes now, so either I make my own
version, tieing release note generation even closer to me, or we add
some flags and keep improving the tool.

Bottom line: I need to start the release notes today --- I can hack my
own version and we can revisit this later, which I am afraid will be in
one year, or we can just add what I have and we can keep hacking on it
as needed.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ It's impossible for everything to be true. +