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On Wed, 2004-07-21 at 16:08 +0100, Stuart Herbert wrote: |
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> Think of it this way. Good change information, like good QA, is something |
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> that is part of the professional behaviour reasonably expected of a software |
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> engineer. |
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|
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Someone else alluded to this, and I'd just like to reinforce the point: |
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in terms of assessing the risk of a potential upgrade, some sense of |
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what has changed is necessary. |
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|
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Unfortunately, the typical ChangeLog in portage is: |
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|
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18 Feb 2004; David Holm <dholm@g.o> db-4.2.52_p1.ebuild: |
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Added to ~ppc. |
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|
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and |
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|
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*evolution-1.4.6 (22 Mar 2004) |
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|
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22 Mar 2004; Alastair Tse <liquidx@g.o> evolution-1.4.6.ebuild: |
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version bump |
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|
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the trouble is especially evident in the second example. What are the |
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changes between evo 1.4.5 and evo 1.4.6? |
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|
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That, of course, is answered by the contents of the upstream ChangeLog, |
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which there usually is one. In this case it is: |
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|
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http://developer.ximian.com/projects/evolution/release_notes/1.4.6.html |
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|
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Which is actually what I, in an enterprise deployment manager role, need |
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to know about before I can make an upgrade decision. The stuff about |
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arches being marked stable, etc, is, while internally important, not |
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terribly interesting compared to this. |
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|
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It would be fantastic if we can find a way to include such information. |
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After all, the developer doing the version bump (or better yet, the user |
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making the bug report) probably at least had a look at the changes list, |
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where ever it is to be found. That information should at least be |
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hyperlinked, and, far better - (especially if we're switching to an XML |
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format) included in Gentoo's ChangeLogs. |
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|
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Cheers, |
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|
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AfC |
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|
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-- |
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Andrew Frederick Cowie |
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|
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OPERATIONAL DYNAMICS |
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Operations Consultants and Infrastructure Engineers |
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|
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http://www.operationaldynamics.com/ |