On Wed, 08 May 2013 19:24:48 +0200, Krinkle krinklemail@gmail.com wrote:
How does this make anything harder for new users? If anything, it makes it easier by not having to worry about which file to edit, what to put in it etc.
You're either not reading what I wrote or intentionally pulling my words out of context. I said "harder to get changes merged", which is also precisely what I meant - the more actions a reviewer has to perform, the lesser the chance of a changeset being merged (I can provide detailed examples if you want, but I'm sure you know it just as well as I do). And please don't try to convince me figuring out which one of the two files with release notes is hard for anyone with their mind in order.
What to put in is trivial for simple changes - you're right that the commit message will do. And for complex ones, well, I would expect that anybody making them is already knowledgeable enough to know what a good release note is; and your proposed workflow more complicated than what we have now anyway.
(On a side-note, the 1.21 release notes file should have been killed a long time ago when we branched REL1_21; I have no idea what is it still doing in master.)
As for more burden on reviewers, I disagree. It might inspire them to give more care to proper commit subjects (and edit them liberally as needed) because if you leave it in bad shape, it needs to be fixed later in the notes.
"Liberally editing" commit subject is an extremely annoying thing when the threads in your mail client get split and when the items on your dashboard change. If the message has to be fixed, please point it out or just fix it properly *once*.
And here again, it simplifies things by maintaining release notes centrally and away from inside the tight development loop. Some of the same people will be doing both, but in the right frame of mind, instead of when you don't want to.
This is a fallacy; we just need to get gerrit to merge them properly. I have already worked on prototyping a solution (https://github.com/MatmaRex/mediawikireleasenotes-driver), but, being a volunteer, I am unable to spend as much time on it as I'd like. And if switching the merging mode will help as Chad says, then the point is moot anyway.