Hello all,
OK, now that I have your attention...
I can make the claim I did in $SUBJECT because I wrote them (actually,
others have made the same claim, but I digress)... :-)
I'll be making changes in the way the release notes are done for Fedora
Core 2, but first I want to collect some data.
Basically, what do you want the release notes to look like?
Currently, the release notes includes the following sections:
o An Introduction to the Fedora Project (Should this be kept? Might be
a good way for newbies to get hooked into the Fedora community)
o Hardware Requirements (CPU, disk space, memory)
o Installation-Related Notes (Anything that impacts the user during
installation)
o General Notes (Anything else that doesn't fall into any of the other
sections)
o Package Changes (packages that have been added/deleted/deprecated)
o Kernel Notes (If it relates to the kernel, it goes here)
These sections came into existence organically (meaning that nobody really
thought about it :-) and I think it shows. The biggest thing I dislike
about this structure is that the "General Notes" section becomes so
overwhelmingly large that it's difficult to find anything in there.
Some differing approaches come to mind:
o Make it all package based
Pros:
- If you want to see whether package foo has anything of interest,
it's easy enough to find out -- look in section foo.
Cons:
- Way too many sections with way too little content in each one
o Make it partially package based (select which packages get their own
section based on packages that are "important" or "big" or "changed"
enough -- everything else goes into a "none-of-the-above" section)
Pros:
- Still pretty easy to find stuff (you look for a specific section,
if nothing, look in "none-of-the-above")
Cons:
- How to select which packages get sections in a meaningful way and
with a minimum of flames ("Hey, why didn't 'foo' get a section --
it's really important/big/changed?")
o Make it based on function (for example, "Desktop", or "Programming")
Pros:
- If chosen well, sections would make sense
Cons:
- While most packages would be easy to categorize, there will
always be ones that might straddle sections -- what then? And
there's still probably need to be a "none-of-the-above" section,
though it should be minimal in size (if the functions are chosen
well)
My instinct says a function-based approach would probably be best, but
maybe someone out there has an entirely different approach that would be
even better.
In any case, I'm sure that I can't do as good a job coming up with ideas as
everyone reading this. :-) So, let's hear it -- what do you want the
release notes to look like?
Ed
--
Ed Bailey Red Hat, Inc. http://www.redhat.com/
