Re: Hash out a solution for ChangeLog/NEWS at the Cauldron?

[Joseph Myers <joseph at codesourcery dot com>]

On Tue, 4 Aug 2015, Paul Eggert wrote:

> Generating NEWS automatically might be a tougher nut to crack; not sure it's
> worth it.

It's the list of fixed bugs in NEWS that's a pain at present (requires 
extra manual effort at commit time) and would better be generated either 
from commit log information or from Bugzilla data.  (If from commit logs, 
it would be desirable for the commit annotation that indicates a commit 
fully fixes a bug also to cause that bug to be closed as fixed 
automatically.  Of course you need to allow for the case where the 
annotation was missing and ensure the bug can still be put in the list - 
as well as allowing for the case where the fix had to be reverted and the 
bug should be removed from the list, or for where the bug number was got 
wrong in the commit annotation.)

Note that this is a list of bugs *fixed* in the release, included because 
fixed bugs are considered user-visible changes that should be noted, but 
most don't merit more detailed NEWS entries.  Whereas the [BZ #N] notation 
in an individual ChangeLog entry means the commit is *relevant* to a bug, 
but might be a partial fix rather than a complete fix (in which case the 
bug would not be closed or added to the list of fixed bugs).

It's true that ChangeLog generation is easier, in that much of the 
automation already exists and just needs adapting to glibc (and no doubt a 
lot of work for the first several months pointing out to people that they 
got their commit message format wrong and making the changes to fix that 
up after the fact).

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com