Re: Credit in the release notes WAS: Draft release notes complete

On 05/12/2012 09:02 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 03:42:48PM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
>>> How many names on a single item is ideal? The activity of reviewers and
>>> their names on commit messages has greatly expanded the number of
>>> potential names per item.
>>>
>>> How much of a downside is having the names in the release notes? For
>>> example, we decided that company names shouldn't be on release note
>>> items, so there is a case where we decided names were more of a negative
>>> than a positive. Are there other negatives? Do other project release
>>> notes have developer names? How are these names perceived by our
>>> general readers?
>> The two paragraphs above show the main problem.
>>
>> Who gets listed on each item is a matter of some contention. For
>> example, if Robert Haas reviews a patch, and makes substantial
>> suggesitons and fixes to the patch, should he be listed on it as well?
>> If so, how much work is required for someone to be listed if they're not
>> the original author? What if we merge two patches, but take 90% of
>> Patch A and only 10% of Patch B? etc.
> One idea I just had was to optionally put developer names on section
> headings. That would remove my name from the nine pg_upgrade entries in
> the pg_upgrade section. We could put Tom Lane's name at the top of the
> optimizer section, and some of the server-side languages could be
> trimmed down this way.

Say you do eight and someone else does one. I just don't see any benefit
in this. The fact that a name is repeated a few times really doesn't matter.

>
> Should we go with a single developer per item, and then let people
> suggest corrections? With reviewers involved, and often multiple commit
> messages per release note item, the just isn't enough detail in git logs
> to reproduce this accurately. I also over-emphasized new
> developers/reviewers, but that seems to have distorted the other goals
> unacceptably.

Most cases should be pretty clear. Most features have a single major
commit. The author(s) mentioned there are who should be listed, IMNSHO.
That might leave a handful of cases where more judgement is required.

We seem to be in danger of overthinking this.

cheers

andrew