Re: [gentoo-dev] GLEP ??: Critical News Reporting

[Marius Mauch <genone@gentoo.org>]

Thierry Carrez wrote:
> Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> 
> 
>>Oh god help. This also points to another reason why this is not such a 
>>good idea. Writing guideXML is a lot more work than writing an e-mail 
>>format file (ciaran's proposed format for those who didn't recognize it).
>>
>>Also having double files containing the same information is broken by 
>>design.
> 
> 
> OK so there is two options :
> 
> 1- every "news" requires a GuideXML/RST/whatever errata at a central web
> location
> Pros:
> - non-portage user can easily browse errata
> - consistency in documentation
> Cons:
> - work overhead for errata-writing dev
> 
> 2- every "news" requires just a short text-based item, extra doc is optional
> Pros:
> - flexibility: short news don't require writing extra doc
> - external doc reuse: the documentation referenced in the news item can
> be some upstream upgrade doc when sufficient
> Cons:
> - lack of consistency and difficulty for non-portage users to browse

I don't understand the last point really ... You can always transform 
the plain text message into GuideXML (you just might not have all the 
fancy markup, but even that could be solved).
So all in all I really don't understand this whole subthread, I'll just 
post how I see it right now:
There will be one location (either in the tree or replicated to the 
tree) which contains summary style notices for important tree updates. 
The format of the notices should be as simple as possible (I've learned 
this the hard way with the GLSA system) while allowing at least basic 
filtering rules, I think the format described in the GLEP is good for 
that. It should also be possible to easily transform those notices into 
a website (be it errata.g.o or something else) that matches the general 
look and feel of the Gentoo websites, should be simple enough with the 
given format (but then I don't know much about XSLT).
If a notice needs a more detailed explanation that should be submitted 
in the docs section (maybe a special "Upgrade Guides" section?) and 
linked to from the notice.
Should also be simple enough to replicate notices to thw www.g.o 
frontpage/GWN/-announce/...

Just to make this crystal clear again: The main point of the notices is 
to get peoples attention so they become aware that some upgrade might 
not be as smooth as usual, not necessarily to provide them with all 
potential information, that's the job of the (external) upgrade guides.

One thing I'd be interested in before adding support for this: How many 
such notices do people here expect per year? Mainly trying to get an 
idea how this would affect the tree size  and if it needs some 
"housekeeping" (e.g. five files per month aren't an issue, 500 files per 
month might be).

Marius
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