Re: 7.5 change documentation

Neil Conway <neilc(at)samurai(dot)com> writes:
> Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
>> In theory there should be a section at the head of release.sgml
>> mentioning the major changes done-so-far, but for various reasons
>> this hasn't gotten installed in the 7.5 branch yet. (Look at the
>> CVS versions during 7.4 development to see how we did it last time.)

> Well, keep in mind we didn't do it very effectively in 7.4 :-) The
> vast majority of changes weren't recorded there, and the ones that
> were had to be fleshed out quite a lot in the actual release notes.

> The last time that someone (Peter and myself, IIRC) suggested that we
> really incrementally maintain the release notes during the development
> cycle, Bruce said that he personally finds it more comfortable to
> summarize the CVS changelogs all at once shortly before we release the
> first beta. AFAIR that's where the discussion ended.

It's fine with me if Bruce prefers to build the release notes directly
from the change logs. As I saw it, the purpose of the temporary list of
things-done-so-far is not to be the raw material for the release notes.
It's to let alpha testers know about major changes that they might want
to test. As such, it's fine that it's incomplete.

The other way we could handle this goal is to be a tad more vigorous about
checking off items as "done" in the TODO list. However, Bruce generally
doesn't bother to make a new entry in the TODO list if someone does
something that wasn't in the list to begin with, and so I'm not sure
it's the right vehicle.

regards, tom lane