Re: Release note bloat is getting out of hand

On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 4:07 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>> On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 3:11 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>>> So I'm bemused by Robert's insistence that he wants that format to support
>>> searches. As I said, I find it far more convenient to search the output
>>> of "git log" and/or src/tools/git_changelog --- I keep text files of those
>>> around for exactly that purpose.
>
>> I normally search in one of two ways. Sometimes a grep the sgml;
>> other times, I go to, say,
>> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/release-9-4.html and then
>> edit the URL to take me back to 9.3, 9.2, 9.1, etc. It's true that
>> 'git log' is often the place to go searching for stuff, but there are
>> times when it's easier to find out what release introduced a feature
>> by looking at the release notes, and it's certainly more useful if you
>> want to send a link to someone who is not git-aware illustrating the
>> results of your search.
>
>> Well, maybe I'm the only one who is doing this and it's not worth
>> worrying about it just for me. But I do it, all the same.
>
> I'm not out to take away a feature you need. I'm just wondering why it
> has to be supported in exactly the way it's done now. Wouldn't a
> separately maintained release-notes-only document serve the purpose fine?

Well, I'd like to have all the release notes on the web site as they
are now, and I'd like to have all the SGML in the build tree as it is
now. If someone wants to create a make docs-fast target that omits
older release notes, that's obviously not a problem. What I don't
want to do is have information that is easily available now (put the
right two digits into the URL bar and you are done) suddenly require
more thought to get at (OK, so back through 9.0 is on the web site,
and then there's this other place you can go to get the older stuff,
if you can remember where it is).

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company