gnustep-dev
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [flame] NEWS file is useless


From: Nicola Pero
Subject: Re: [flame] NEWS file is useless
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:03:14 +0000


It would be good to consider exactly how much (if any) information we want to present in NEWS/ReleaseNotes ... my preference would be for minimal information there, and a pointer to a generated ChangeLog for details. This would require a policy that svn log entries should be suitable for app developers (users of the libraries), not just for people writing the libraries themselves


I agree that it would be good to have ChangeLog entries that are well written and readable by people who are not working on the software themselves :-)

I still think NEWS (and/or Release Notes) need to be written separately as an additional task. We shouldn't be lazy with documentation ;-)

I guess it depends on the piece of software, but for example our core libraries have a large user base, and it's worth spending some time writing clearly readable NEWS/ReleaseNotes. If you don't write them, you'll spend 10x the time answering questions via email about changes to the library anyway, so it even saves time in practice to spend time documenting
changes! ;-)

Finally, NEWS/ReleaseNotes are important for marketing - any time we implement something good, we should tell the world! NEWS/ReleaseNote tend to for the basis for public announcements or tend to end up on websites etc. so we should work on them.


Lastly ... I'm not even sure that the historical policies on ChangeLog etc are written down anywhere

They are part of the GNU Coding Standards, 
http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Change-Logs.html

Thanks




reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]