Better development announcements
We need better announcements on -devel-announce for new and old developers.
The volume on -devel is increasing dramatically and I know quite a few
developers who don't read this list anymore (and I find myself hitting "d"
faster and faster). However, with -devel-announce alone, you cannot keep up
with new developments within Debian.
For example, I cannot recall an announcement of debconf which explains what
the tool does, why we should use it and where to find out more information
(btw, I searched the -devel-announce archives). All packages are supposed
to use debconf, but many (or, at least, some) developers are not aware of
this.
Similarly, the autoconf issue is relevant to many packages. Henrique de
Moraes Holschuh has introduced autotools-dev, but it has never been
announced to all developers. The HPPA/ia64/gcc 3.0 related problems should
have been summarized on -devel-announce as well (and no, it's not too late
yet).
We really have to post more well written announcement to -devel-announce.
This includes periodic updates about policy changes or proposals (thanks
to Steve Greenland), new developments (debconf, new debhelper releases
(DH_COMPAT=1 is deprecated but many people are not aware), autotools-dev),
and other issues relevant to all developers.
So, when you do something which might be of interest to other developers,
then please announce this. Also, if an important issue has been discussed
on -devel and a conclusion has been reached (this might happen sometimes),
then summarize and post it. And, for those issues listed above, it is still
not too late to post a nice summary with pointers for more information to
-devel-announce.
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