Re: Bringing back useful Launchpad changelogs

["Matthew Revell" <matthew.revell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi William,

2008/11/12 William Grant <wgrant@xxxxxxxxxx>:

> I'm sending this after a bit of a discussion in #launchpad a few hours ago.
>
> In Launchpad 1.2.3 and earlier, fairly detailed changelogs were sent out
> with the release notes. Since then, one has had to trawl through
> launchpad-project's fixed milestoned bugs and work out what effect the
> fix will have.
>
> Why were they stopped? Even before 1.2.3 they started getting less
> usefully detailed.

As intellectronica touched on in the #launchpad conversation, one of
the reasons for changing the format of the release announcements was
to bring more focus to them.

The release announcement goes out very widely so we focus on what is
likely to be of interest to most Launchpad users. For big changes that
are of interest to a limited group, we communicate directly with that
group.

Our assumption - and the fact that we've had perhaps just two
complaints seems to back this up - is that most people aren't
interested in the minutiae of a Launchpad release. If they're
interested in a particular bug, they can subscribe to the bug report
and see when it's fixed.

Your mention of trawling through the milestone pages suggests that
this isn't working for you. Is that because you find the interface
hard work or something else?

gmb suggested in the irc conversation that we could produce both the
big announcement and a more traditional changelog. That's certainly a
possibility but I'd want to make sure it was going to be useful to
quite a few people and that it would definitely do something beyond
what's available now, before I commit to producing it each month.

-- 
Matthew Revell - Launchpad.net - free software collaboration and project hosting