GHC boot-library package changelogs & release-notes

[Simon Peyton Jones]

Herbert

Would you like to add some notes to https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Commentary/Libraries, to describe what the file is, and the criteria for modifying it?  (After all, the patch history is a kind of change log too.)

Thanks

Simon

| -----Original Message-----
| From: ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of
| Herbert Valerio Riedel
| Sent: 29 January 2014 16:33
| To: ghc-devs
| Subject: GHC boot-library package changelogs & release-notes
| 
| Hello fellow GHC devs,
| 
| As some of you might have noticed, I added a changelog.md file to
| libraries/base:
| 
|  https://github.com/ghc/packages-
| base/blob/c8634027d4e3315a2276fb1be8168c486419785a/changelog.md
| 
| (please feel free to fix any typos/omissions/whatever you notice)
| 
| My hope/motivation is that since Hackage gained the ability to display
| changelog files, the rather extensive changes in `base` might be a bit
| more easily/conveniently accessible on Hackage.
| 
| I chose to use Markdown format, as I believe it may be more convenient
| to maintain/edit the `base` changelog as plain text rather than having
| to edit XML after each noteworthy change in `base`. And as the
| release-notes typically only exploit a subset of the Docbook
| facilities,
| the conversion to Docbook XML could be performed semi-automatically
| shortly before a release.
| 
| Moreover, the release notes from previous major GHC release (which in
| the past contained the major changes in `base` et al.) are usually
| removed again. While a separate changelog file would usually retain
| (more) version history.
| 
| Therefore, I'd propose to switch from editing the user's guide release
| note for library release notes to using Hackage-changelog files in
| Markdown format (following a common structural convention) and make it
| the release-manager's responsibility to integrate the respective
| package's changelog content into the user's guide.
| 
| Any comments?
| 
| Cheers,
|   hvr
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