List of fixed bugs in NEWS now automatically generated

[Joseph Myers]

On Thu, 5 Nov 2015, Roland McGrath wrote:

> I think we want conventions whereby one can tell from bugzilla alone which
> release branches have a particular bug fixed.  That seems desireable just
> for people (whether maintainers or not) trying to figure things out.  A
> concrete benefit would be that it becomes possible to fully automate the
> process of updating NEWS on a release branch, which I think is less
> error-prone than relying on manual updates.  Eventually, we could even have
> a git hook that enforces that canonical NEWS updates are included in each
> commit to a release branch.

I'm fine with having such conventions, hooks etc. if someone wishes to 
implement them.  Though I think the utility is substantially less than (a) 
a system / conventions for automatic ChangeLog generation from commit logs 
(with a hook to stop commits to master / release branches that don't 
follow that convention unless explicitly marked as deliberately having no 
ChangeLog entry) and (b) a notation for commit messages that causes a git 
hook, if the commit is on master, to mark a bug as FIXED with the next 
mainline release as milestone.  Since (a) and (b) are both relevant to a 
lot more commits than anything specific to release branches (and once we 
have (a), it becomes possible to compare the git-patch-id of mainline 
commits with that of patch postings, and so to mark many patches in 
patchwork as committed automatically).

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com