Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: GLEP 42 (Was: Getting Important Updates To Users)

[Alec Warner <warnera6@egr.msu.edu>]

Jason Stubbs wrote:
> On Saturday 05 November 2005 03:53, Alec Joseph Warner wrote:
> 
>>As far as including news in the tree goes, news is repository bound
>>information.  Each repository may in fact have relevant news, and in
>>preparation for multiple repositories this is how the news should be
>>handled.  It goes with the rest of the repo-specific information.  That
>>is why it should be in the tree.
> 
> 
> I seem to be repeating myself... What's an example of repository-specific 
> non-package-specific news? Why does `emerge --changelog` not suffice for 
> package-specific news?
> 
> --
> Jason Stubbs

Ok so I'm pwned there ;)

emerge --changelog has no 'official' format.  I believe echangelog
actually puts the changes in the correct format for emerge -l to read,
however not everyone uses echangelog.  Many developers commit in an
incompatable syntax causing the parsing to fail.  This I believe, is an
implementation issue.  Obviously if someone is trying to get an upgrade
guide to users they aren't going to commit in an incompatable format.

We had a similar discussion before and many people wanted gentoo
changelogs to stay true to only gentoo changes, thus some think a gentoo
changelog is an inappropriate place to look for upgrade guides and
errata.  Changelogs are also not easy to search through and the current
syntax does not provide all the benifits of the syntax provided by GLEP 42.

So the options for using emerge --changelog are basically, updating the
syntax to make it useful, probably audit the changelog code in emerge to
make sure it works better ( even half decent 'entries' aren't grabbed,
but I haven't looked at the changelog code in months ).  This of course
makes emerge the newsreader you didn't want, although I'm sure the
eselect module could be modified to read Changelog's just as easily.

Also, nothing covers the expiration of Changelog contents vs expiration
of news items, since the news items are file independent, what if a
bunch of commits basically erases a relevant news item out of the changelog?

Certainly I would support either way ( news or changelog ) although in
the latter case there are some seperate issues that need to be worked
out ( mostly policy issues ).
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