Re: Where are detailed potato release notes?
> > Another alternative, if it is too much work to maintain detailed
> > things like this so long before the release: have any requests such as
> > mine pointing to http://www.debian.org/~<maintainer>/<package> and
> > have the maintainer deal with the info themselves at this stage.
> >
> > How does that sound?
>
> Well, generally, I would think /usr/doc/<package>/README.Debian, or
> even /usr/doc/<package>/README.Debian_upgrading would be more to the
> point.
>
> If it's really something that people need to be aware of when
> upgrading, that is, really something very significant, it should be
> added to the release notes proper. Some things which come to mind:
>
> * must you upgrade to kernel 2.2 for potato?
>
> * something on the order of the the "Great X Re-org"
>
> Remember, we are going to have over 3000 packages.
There is also a second level. These are major, system-wide,
multi-package issues. But then there ought to be a list of packages
which have significant user-visible incompatibilities or changes as
well. Yes, each will have a README.Debian_upgrading or similar
included, but it is not really feasible to expect someone upgrading to
check 1000+ /usr/doc/<package> directories to check whether there is
something important. I would suggest that a rough heuristic could be:
The "before" cases:
- If the user doesn't read the upgrade notes for this package
*before* upgrading, his/her system will die a horrible death or
will lose major functionality
=> should appear on main release notes page, and the situation
should be improved if this is at all possible
[possible egs: kernel-2.2 (utmp group etc), great X re-org]
- If the user doesn't read the upgrade notes for this package
*before* upgrading, the upgrade will not run smoothly
=> the maintainer needs to clean up their package so this is not
the case, but if this is impossible, the situation should be
described on the main release notes page
The "after" cases:
- If the user doesn't read the upgrade notes for this package
*after* upgrading, his/her system will die a horrible death or
will lose major functionality
=> should appear on main release notes page, and the situation
should be improved in whatever way possible
- If the user doesn't read the upgrade notes for this package
*after* upgrading, the package concerned will lose significant
functionality, or the sysadmin's configuration will have been lost,
or similar
=> should appear in a list on the release notes page. These
could link to text describing the problems, or the page could
just say "The following packages have major changes which will
most likely require manual intervention after the upgrade.
It is recommended that you read
/usr/doc/<package>/README.Debian_upgrading after installing
any of these packages to ensure a smooth upgrade."
How does this sound? For example, my fvwm package comes into the last
category: I did not dare to preserve the old config files as so much
had changed, and there may have been significant compatibility issues.
Julian
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
Debian GNU/Linux Developer. jdg@debian.org
-*- Finger jdg@master.debian.org for my PGP public key. -*-
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