Annotated release notes

OK, I have committed changes to release.sgml so most complex entries
have a paragraph describing the change. You can see the result at:

http://candle.pha.pa.us/main/writings/pgsql/sgml/release.html#RELEASE-7-4

I need people to check this and help me with the items marked 'bjm'. I
am confused about the proper text for those sections.

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Tatsuo Ishii wrote:
> > Tatsuo Ishii wrote:
> > > > I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have
> > > > been, er, boycotting it. I think, too, that release notes *must* be
> > > > written incrementally at the same time that the feature change is made.
> > > > This is the only way we can get accurate and complete release notes, and
> > > > the descriptions could even include some context, some motivations, etc.
> > > > We have release cycles of 10 months, and there is no way we can make
> > > > sensible release notes by gathering individual commit messages over that
> > > > period of time. Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and
> > > > there is no mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit "Add
> > > > Informix mode."
> > > >
> > > > I suggest we just do it like the documentation: If you don't document it,
> > > > it doesn't exist. If you don't write a line for the release notes, it
> > > > doesn't exist either.
> > >
> > > I tend to agree it. For every release I and my colleague have been
> > > working on creating detailed release notes (of course in Japanese),
> > > otherwise we cannot tell people what are changed, added or fixed since
> > > there is little info in the official release note. This is painful
> > > since we have to dig into the mail archives and cvs commit messages to
> > > look for what each item of the official release note actually
> > > means. These work take at least 2 to 3 weeks with several people
> > > involved. The hardest part is what are fixed. The only useful
> > > information seems to be the cvs commit messages, however typical
> > > messages are something like "see recent discussions in the mail
> > > archive for more details". This is not very helpful at least for
> > > me. Once I proposed that we add a sequence number to each mail and the
> > > commit messages point to the number. This way we could easily trace
> > > what are the bug report and what are the actual intention for the
> > > fix. For some reason noboy was interested in. Maybe this is due to
> > > "coulture gap"... (In Japan giving a sequence number to each mail in
> > > mailing lists is quite common).
> >
> > OK, if Tatsuo and SRA are having problems, I have to address it. I can
> > supply a more detailed list to Tatsuo/SRA, or I can beef up the release
> > notes to contain more information. Seems some in the community would
> > like to have this detail so I might as well do it and have it in the
> > official docs. One idea would be to add a section at the bottom of the
> > release notes that goes into detail on changes listed in the release
> > notes above --- that way, people can still skim the 300-line release
> > notes, and if they want detailed information about the optimizer changes
> > or subtle pg_dump fixes, that will be at the bottom.
> >
> > How does that sound? I can start on this for 7.4 next week. It
> > basically means going through the CVS logs again and pulling out
> > additional details.
>
> Sounds good. However this kind of information could become huge and I
> am afraid it does not suite well in the official docs in the source
> tree. I think putiing it in somewhere in a web site (maybe
> http://developer.postgresql.org/?) might be more appropreate.
> What do you think?
> --
> Tatsuo Ishii
>

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