[Zope-dev] official release policy ZTK is still not changed

[Reinout van Rees]

On 2009-09-15, Tres Seaver <tseaver at palladion.com> wrote:
>
> If you are making releases without having the CHANGES.txt open in your
> browser, then you need to put down the keyboard and back away slowly, so
> that nobody gets hurt.  Reviewing / correcting the changelog (and
> comparing it with a diff from the last release) should be a fundamental
> part of making a release.  At the very minimum, you're supposed to
> update the release date in the changelog, right?

Checking the changelog: yes, do that.

And again, zest.releaser takes the "make doing the right thing simple"
approach by providing a "lasttagdiff" command to show the diff of the current
checkout with the last tag it can find in svn.  For the common case, this
helps a lot.

And updating the release date? Yes, zest.releaser does that for you so that
you never ever forget it.

(And yes, it first shows you a diff and asks you to press "yes" so you do get
to review it and you're constantly reminded about what's happening).

> I *like* the property of the "0" strategy that it makes the job of
> releasing a package a little harder:  releaseing software should be a
> thoughtful, careful process, not something you do without a bit of
> hesitation and review.

Seen from a different viewpoint, this also makes it an unappetizing yucky
event.  Human nature then quickly takes over and tries to find corners to
cut.  And human nature includes mistakes, so stuff is forgotten (like that
forgotten upload to pypi we saw here on the mailinglist).


Tres, is your preference something personal or is it something you'd like to
see everyone adopt?  In that case "my" zest.releaser would be quite high on
your things-to-torture list :-)  Which would sadden me a bit as my goals were:

- make it easy to do the good thing (like an easy diff with the last tag)

- make it painless and take the hassle out of it

- get more good releases.


The '0' would be something zest.releaser could code around, so it would defeat
the purpose of making it harder.  The loss of clarity would still be there.


Reinout


-- 
Reinout van Rees - reinout at vanrees.org - http://reinout.vanrees.org
Software developer at http://www.thehealthagency.com
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