On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 12:01 PM, Tom Lane<tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
>> I'm willing to help if these are "8.5 release notes in process". I'm
>> not willing to help if they are "alpha release notes that will be
>> thrown away afterwards". Which is it?
>
> That depends largely on what they look like when we get to beta,
> I imagine. Are you asking for a guarantee that no one will edit
> your deathless prose?
Not at all. Don't misunderstand me here: what I was worried about
(and maybe it's without any justification) is that you and/or Bruce
have ideas about how this has to be done that are so specific that
it's not even worth anyone else making an attempt. If that were the
case, then I wouldn't be very interested in working on it.
Now, on the other hand, if doing some work now incrementally over the
next couple of alpha releases will not only produce good release notes
for those alpha releases but also streamline the process of putting
together release notes for beta/final, then it sounds like a
worthwhile investment of time. In the 8.4 release cycle, this was one
of the things that held us up a bit (not a huge amount, but a bit):
all the work was done at the end, and there was a lot to do. If we
can make a start on this early, and if the start is good enough that
it requires incremental changes rather than "rm -f" then that seems
like a pretty good idea.
> Traditionally one of the main time sinks involved in making the release
> notes has been trying to give them a uniform voice, categorizing them
> sensibly, weighting the space given to different topics in a way that
> seems to make sense in hindsight, etc. I'd be rather surprised if notes
> prepared piecemeal over a series of alpha releases didn't need work of
> that sort when we get to the end. That doesn't mean the work would be
> "thrown away", but it does mean it's likely to get edited.
OK, great. That sounds like exactly the sort of editing that I would
expect to be necessary.
...Robert
