[rfc] NEWS handling

[Martin Pool]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 11:47 AM, Robert Collins
<robertc at robertcollins.net> wrote:
> So news is a common bugbear.
>
> I'd like to propose having PQM create NEWS for us.
>
> Some thoughts:
>  - part of the target that pqm runs to run tests could update NEWS
>  - we could take some metadata from the branch being merged - e.g.
>   a revision property, or some other thing
>  - we could have a file in the branch being merged that is incorporated
>   into NEWS
>
> I don't particularly care about 'can regenerate anytime' goals here -

I think it should be something where somebody e.g. generating the html
documentation or building a package off a random branch can generate
NEWS without needing any special help from pqm.

> I
> just don't want to have to edit another branch to fix a 'it missed
> RELEASE, put it in RELEASE+1's section'.

And I guess you're also wanting to avoid needing to resubmit because
of an accidental conflict in merging NEWS.

> So I guess I'm thinking of a fairly simple script that will take some
> new entries (formatted properly), find the nearest section they fit into
> in the NEWS file, and drop them in in alpa order with surrounding VWS.

That sounds good to me.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>