[Debichem-devel] RfC: Best practises: Summarizing major new features in debian/changelog

[Daniel Leidert]

Am Mittwoch, den 15.07.2009, 16:58 -0700 schrieb Jordan Mantha:
> On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 7:42 AM, Michael Banck<mbanck at debian.org> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I think it would be nice if we summarize the major new (end-user
> > visible!) features of a new upstream version in debian/changelog (if
> > there are any, and if we readily know about them).
> >
> > Look e.g. at the postgresql-8.4 changelog for 8.4.0-1:
> > http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/p/postgresql-8.4/current/changelog
> >
> > I was currently writing this up for the pymol-1.2 release (taken from
> > http://www.pymol.org):
> >
> > pymol (1.2r1-1) UNRELEASED; urgency=low
> >
> >  * New upstream release.  Major new features include:
> >    + Improved animation capabilities, with a movie timeline slider and
> >      automatic object motion path generation.
> >    + Selective surfacing of pockets and cavities (see Settings -> Surface
> >      menu).
> >    + Improved 3D small-molecule builder, with support for the "mengine"
> >      Force-Field implementation.
> >    + Improved movie export, with support for the mpeg_encode MPEG writer.
> >    + Support for new stereo 3D displays.
> >
> >  [...]
> >
> > What do you think?
> 
> I totally agree. I've been bad about this but I really appreciate it
> when other people do it. Besides giving info to people who read the
> changelogs I think it's also helpful to the packager as a review of
> any packaging changes that may be needed due to new features,
> dependencies, etc.

I disagree in case, there are NEWS files or similar files summarizing
the changes. There is no need to duplicate this information into
debian/changelog. Further really important information has to go into
NEWS.Debian.

In case of pymol there is IMO not a NEWS file or something similar, so
summarizing the changes might be useful. But when I read the information
I wonder, which of the information is of such an importance, that we
should add it to debian/changelog? The first item IMHO is not really
worth to note it (but that is really IMHO).

Regards, Daniel