[Zope-dev] Re: Extend specification of how to maintain the changelog

[Jens Vagelpohl]

On Jun 18, 2008, at 19:00 , yuppie wrote:
> Why do we maintain a CHANGES.txt file? Who reads it and why?
>
> The audience I have in mind are users of released versions. They  
> read CHANGES.txt to figure out what's new in a release.
>
> Let's take Zope 2 as an example:
>
> Most people will currently use version 2.10.6. If they read  
> CHANGES.txt of Zope 2.11.0, they want to know what's new in 2.11.0  
> compared to 2.10.6. CHANGES.txt of Zope 2.11.0 is 233 lines long and  
> provides (almost) exactly what they need.
>
> You propose to mix in all the change notes made between 2.10.0 and  
> 2.10.6 with a total of another 240 lines. That makes it almost  
> impossible to figure out what's new compared to 2.10.6.
>
> On the 2.10 branch we have the information which bugfix belongs to  
> which 2.10 release. You just have to copy that information from the  
> branch to the trunk. No big burden for the maintainers, but a big  
> win for the users.

That's not the only audience. I as a developer consult CHANGES.txt to  
(hopefully) find *all* changes on the respective branch or on the  
trunk that have flowed into it until now.

I'm not sure what you're saying in that last paragraph. Copying a  
change history isn't needed when you're diligent about updating the  
change log whenever you make actual trunk changes.

jens