Re: Deliver important Guix changes to users, please

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <address@hidden> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> I suppose we could use some specially-formatted Git commits to pass
>> messages to users.  I’m afraid it would be hard to get those
>> messages
>> translated.
>
> I beg you not to do this, even as fodder for a friendly front
> end. Just use a structured text file.  Add dates.  Affected
> packages. Metadata.  Hell, use sexps if you like.  Fix typos/add
> caveats to old news items when needed, not through errata commits.
> Don't confuse git log with a log like some people confuse git blame
> with comments.

The interesting part here is that commits are anchored in the version
control history.  Thus, you could easily tell whether a news item is
relevant or not.

If you store news separately, well I guess you could just write the
commit to which the news item applies.

Hmm, maybe you’re right!

So we could have, say:

  .news/[0-9]+.news (every other file would be ignored)

and then some sexp format, say:

  (news
    (entry
      (title "GDM is now the default")
      (commit "cabba9e")
      (body "Hey, GDM’s in the house!"))
    (entry
      (title "News are here")
      …))

and we could maybe even have a PO file for this.

How does that sound?

(Probably post 1.0, but worth discussing.)

Ludo’.