Re: pgsql: Doc: fill in "major enhancements" list in v13 release notes.

On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 4:10 PM Jonathan S. Katz <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org>
wrote:

> On 9/14/20 9:58 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> > [ redirecting to -www ]
> >
> > Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> writes:
> >> On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 3:28 PM Andrew Dunstan <
> >> andrew(dot)dunstan(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> >>> How is it that this commit still hasn't showed up on the web site, 4
> >>> days later? <https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/release-13.html> still
> >>> shows "TBD"
> >
> >> The "13" docs are only loaded along with releases, we don't load
> snapshot
> >> versions into the docs other than the "devel" ones. That is, from a
> loading
> >> perspective, 13 is treated the same as 12 or 11.
> >
> > Yeah, this is a downside of our decision to maintain release notes
> > per-branch. It used to be you could count on draft release notes to
> > show up in the website's devel docs fairly quickly; but now they
> > never appear there at all.
> >
> > I've wondered if we could improve that. I agree with the policy that
> > the official docs copy should match the last official release ... but
> > maybe we could show unreleased release notes somewhere else, such as
> > under https://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/ ?
>
> Like these?
>
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/release-14.html
>
> Based on how it currently works, we'd have to update the logic to
> include the devel docs, but those don't appear to include much, per the
> comments above.
>
> Otherwise, we'd have to take a special snapshot of just the beta line
> (which we might do in the buildfarm?), load those into the website, then
> display it.
>
> It's possible, but it's no free lunch as we'd have to change a few
> things to accommodate that.
>
> I guess the question is how useful would it be to have it? I haven't had
> a chance to look into the numbers about the general traffic to the PG13
> release notes and the traffic to the release notes page as well, so this
> is purely qualitative at this point.
>

Isn't the release notes page based off the same documentation load as the
general pages? It's just a different way to view them? So unless we
actually load the v13 docs on a different schedule it won't actually help?

And if we do load the docs on a higher frequency for it, then why not load
the full docs? :)

I'm pretty sure we could make it load the docs for v13 for example at a
higher frequency, using existing setups. We would just have to manually
pick which branch(es) that would be and add it as part of the "major
release checklist" to remember to turn it *off* once v13 is actually
released. (Some weird things might happen during the time between stamping
v13 and actually releasing it though -- any docs changes in between those
would end up published and then unpublished, but that's hoipefully not a
big problem)

Given that we only have one branch that is in the state of "labeled a
stable branch but it's not really a stable branch yet", and only for a few
months in the year, it seems doing that manually might well be acceptable?

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: https://www.hagander.net/ <http://www.hagander.net/>
Work: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/ <http://www.redpill-linpro.com/>