Re: Release note bloat is getting out of hand

Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> writes:
>> On 02/02/2015 05:39 PM, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>>> I share the sentiment that the release notes *seem* too big, but the
>>> subsequent discussion shows that it's not clear why that's really a
>>> problem. Exactly what problem are we trying to fix?
>>
>> At a rough count of lines, the release notes for unsupported versions
>> are about 18% of documentation overall (47K out of 265K lines). So
>> they're not insubstantial. Compared to the total size of the tarball,
>> though ...
>
> It would not make that much of a difference in tarball size, agreed.
> It *would* make a difference in the build time and output size of the
> SGML docs --- as I mentioned at the outset, the release notes currently
> account for 25% of the SGML source linecount.

I run `make -s -j4 world` on my i7 fairly often, and it is often
the doc build that I wind up waiting for at the end.

FWIW, my preference would be that unless you choose a special "all
release notes" build, it only build release notes for supported
versions and only up to the point that the branch being built split
off. That way, you don't have to work at it to see whether the
release notes from an older branch duplicate the same bug fixes as
a later branch that is listed. I think it makes sense to put the
"all release notes" page up on our web site.

--
Kevin Grittner
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company