Re: Postgres tracking - the pgtrack project

Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Robert Treat wrote:
>> FWIW I have never understood why we don't require patch submitters/committers 
>> to update the release notes when they do the patch.

I've suggested this more than once in the past -- I think it would be a 
clear improvement over the status quo. Updating the release notes 
incrementally would lead to more accurate and complete release notes: 
more accurate because the description for a feature would be written at 
the same time as the feature itself, and more complete because it would 
be harder to unintentionally omit discussion of a new feature. It would 
also help communicate to users what features will be in the next release 
of Postgres, which is certainly good from a PR point of view (a certain 
Swedish software company is very fond of talking about the features it 
will be adding in future releases, for example...) Finally, it would 
remove the need for a sequential scan of the CVS history, which I'm sure 
is pretty time-consuming, and delays the beta process.

> I can't even get documentation for many patches.  I am hesitant to add
> even more burden.  I would prefer they concentrate on documentation.

The first revision of a patch often doesn't include documentation 
updates, but in that case the submitter should be promptly told what 
they need to fix; I think the same would apply here. In practice, if 
you're committing a patch, you *should* understand it well enough to 
write a release note entry for it, so the burden might end up falling on 
committers, anyway.

-Neil