Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-26 Thread Nik Clayton

On Tue, Apr 24, 2001 at 09:03:10AM -0700, Bruce A. Mah wrote:
 There's a snapshot of RELNOTESng for -CURRENT, updated irregularly,
 at:
 
 http://people.freebsd.org/~bmah/relnotes/

Like it.

My main concern is that this is in the src/ tree.  As other people
have said this is going to complicate things for src/ folks who just
want up to date release notes, and for doc/ people who might not track
-stable or -current, but who want to work on the SGML side of things.

Also, if we want to put these on the website then it means that anyone
doing so will need to have checked out www/, doc/, and src/release/
trees.

Could this come under doc/, and either have a CVS branch for RELENG_4
for just the release notes directory hierarchy, or I could start work on
the osrel{min,max,in} attribute support code again. . .

N
-- 
FreeBSD: The Power to Serve http://www.freebsd.org/
FreeBSD Documentation Project   http://www.freebsd.org/docproj/

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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-26 Thread Bruce A. Mah

If memory serves me right, Wilko Bulte wrote:
 On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 05:06:12PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
  In message [EMAIL PROTECTED] Antoine Beaupre (LMC) writ
 es:
  : Hey whatever. Let's just keep a rendered TXT version where it always
  : (ie. in the src/release... cvs) was but keep the originial as a sgml
  : version in the doc tree.
  
  UPDATING will continue to be a flat file, or I will no longer maintain
  it.
 
 Right ;-) Form follows function

I thought I responded to Warner's, er, strong statement of his position,
earlier, but I'm not sure.  So, for the record, I *have* no intention,
and never *had* any intention of touching src/UPDATING, changing its
format, or even gazing wistfully in its general direction.

Bruce.




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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-26 Thread Nik Clayton

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 09:58:43AM -0700, Bruce A. Mah wrote:
 This problem (which I agree is valid) is not so much a problem as to 
 where the release notes live, but the fact that one needs to actually 
 build human-readable renderings of them.  If people can't be bothered 
 to install the docproj port and the doc/ tree to get release notes 
 living in src/, putting the release notes in doc/ sure isn't going to 
 help.  It's trivial to put the release notes for -RELEASE versions up 
 (the Web site does this already), and Dima thinks it's possible to do 
 this for -CURRENT too (and -STABLE if and when it's applicable).

I think this, as a whole, is a non-problem.  It's trivial to script a
daily build of the release notes and mirror it to the FTP site (and/or
include it in the twice daily build of the web site).

 Putting the release notes in doc/ means that the src/ committers (who I 
 just *barely* got now to make changes to the release notes) are going 
 to have to chase through parts of the doc/ hierarchy.  I'm pretty sure 
 I'm going to lose the few converts I've won if I let people talk me 
 into this.

True, true.

  Also, if we want to put these on the website then it means that anyone
  doing so will need to have checked out www/, doc/, and src/release/
  trees.
 
 I got the impression that this would not be hard.  They don't need to 
 have all of src/ checked out, and if enough people complain about it, we 
 can probably make another module which is just the RELNOTESng part of 
 src/release.

I think that would be a definite requirement.  We could even make
release/ a top level directory, alongside src/, doc/, and ports/.

  Could this come under doc/, and either have a CVS branch for RELENG_4
  for just the release notes directory hierarchy, or I could start work on
  the osrel{min,max,in} attribute support code again. . .
 
 Can it come under doc/?  Sure.  Do I think it's the right thing?  No.
 
 I don't like the idea of having one part of doc/ branched and another 
 part not (especially when the part that's not branched lives higher in 
 the directory hierarchy).  

I don't either (just because I suggest something doesn't mean I always
think it's the best way).

At the end of the day, you're the guy doing the work. . .

N
-- 
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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-26 Thread Bruce A. Mah

If memory serves me right, Nik Clayton wrote:

 Like it.

OK, thanks, that's a good start...

 My main concern is that this is in the src/ tree.  As other people
 have said this is going to complicate things for src/ folks who just
 want up to date release notes, 

This problem (which I agree is valid) is not so much a problem as to 
where the release notes live, but the fact that one needs to actually 
build human-readable renderings of them.  If people can't be bothered 
to install the docproj port and the doc/ tree to get release notes 
living in src/, putting the release notes in doc/ sure isn't going to 
help.  It's trivial to put the release notes for -RELEASE versions up 
(the Web site does this already), and Dima thinks it's possible to do 
this for -CURRENT too (and -STABLE if and when it's applicable).

 and for doc/ people who might not track
 -stable or -current, but who want to work on the SGML side of things.

You don't need to track -STABLE or -CURRENT to work on the docs.  I run 
4-STABLE on all of my machines except one, yet I routinely use those 
machines to handle commits to 5-CURRENT and 3-STABLE as well:

% cd ~bmah/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT
% cvs co release
% cd ~bmah/FreeBSD/4-STABLE
% cvs co -r RELENG_4 release
% cd ~bmah/FreeBSD/3-STABLE
% cvs co -r RELENG_3 release

Putting the release notes in doc/ means that the src/ committers (who I 
just *barely* got now to make changes to the release notes) are going 
to have to chase through parts of the doc/ hierarchy.  I'm pretty sure 
I'm going to lose the few converts I've won if I let people talk me 
into this.

 Also, if we want to put these on the website then it means that anyone
 doing so will need to have checked out www/, doc/, and src/release/
 trees.

I got the impression that this would not be hard.  They don't need to 
have all of src/ checked out, and if enough people complain about it, we 
can probably make another module which is just the RELNOTESng part of 
src/release.

 Could this come under doc/, and either have a CVS branch for RELENG_4
 for just the release notes directory hierarchy, or I could start work on
 the osrel{min,max,in} attribute support code again. . .

Can it come under doc/?  Sure.  Do I think it's the right thing?  No.

I don't like the idea of having one part of doc/ branched and another 
part not (especially when the part that's not branched lives higher in 
the directory hierarchy).  So if I want to work on RELENG_4's release 
notes, I need to checkout HEAD's doc/ and then check out the release 
note's subtree with a RELENG_4 tag.

The osrel{min,max} attributes work to a point, but they presume that
there is a total ordering on version numbers.  For -RELEASEs, this just
*might* be possible.  But when there's multiple development tracks going
on in parallel (and release note items appear *between* releases), this
falls apart.  How do you express the idea that the fix for the
vulnerability described by a security advisory is present in
3.5-STABLE-after-2001-04-06, 4.2-STABLE-after-2001-04-06, and
5.0-CURRENT-after-2001-04-06?  CVS branches (for all their shortcomings)
handle this pretty well, without the need for complex stylesheet
customizations.  Let's just use the right tool for the right job.

(BTW I do want to try to use what you've done with attributes to
implement the DocBook arch= attribute, to do better multi-platform
support.)

I appreciate all the solutions people have put forth, but I think
they're solving a non-problem.  If I leave the release notes in src/
(which is where they've *been* all along, I might add), it's a more
natural fit because release notes are tied to CVS branches and releases
(tags) on those branches.  They live closer in the filesystem hierarchy
and, more importantly, they get exactly the same branching behavior as
the rest of src/.

Thanks,

Bruce.




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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-26 Thread Wilko Bulte

On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 05:06:12PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
 In message [EMAIL PROTECTED] Antoine Beaupre (LMC) writes:
 : Hey whatever. Let's just keep a rendered TXT version where it always
 : (ie. in the src/release... cvs) was but keep the originial as a sgml
 : version in the doc tree.
 
 UPDATING will continue to be a flat file, or I will no longer maintain
 it.

Right ;-) Form follows function

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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-25 Thread Tony Fleisher

On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, Bruce A. Mah wrote:

 [...]
 
 There are two disadvantages to going this route.  I think they're
 fairly minor:
 
 1.  Generating a set of release notes requires the DocBook toolchain
 to be built, as well as the doc/ subtree.  Note that RELNOTESng
 will have absolutely no effect on the buildworld/installworld
 procedure.

[...] 

 defaulting to off.  Once the bugs have been shaken out, I'll make
 RELNOTESng the default and stop maintaining the *.TXT files. Eventually,
 the *.TXT files will get removed.
 

Perhaps the *.TXT files could be periodically regenerated to their 
current location to 1) avoid a POLA violation and 2) allow for at
least some RELNOTES without needing DocBook and doc/ (even if they
may be slightly out of date).

Just an idea..

Tony.


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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-25 Thread Makoto MATSUSHITA


takhus Perhaps the *.TXT files could be periodically regenerated to their 
takhus current location to 1) avoid a POLA violation and 2) allow for at
takhus least some RELNOTES without needing DocBook and doc/ (even if they
takhus may be slightly out of date).

I second this.

It is true that current.freebsd.org and much of do-it-yourself
distributions are generated with 'NODOC=YES', since it needs much time
and disk spaces to process doc.1 target (especially setting up a
DocBook environment).

Removing *.TXT files also makes some difficulties when ordinally make
buildworld/installworld users want to know what changes are made
(they should change their CVSup configulation file, checkout doc if
the repository is CVSuped, install DocBook via ports, and run make(1)
to get a plaintext of release notes).

Just like current 'doc' distribution of 'NODOC=YES', it would be helpful
that *.TXT files are in src/release.

-- -
Makoto `MAR' MATSUSHITA

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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-25 Thread Bruce A. Mah

[Please keep me as one of the explicit recipients of this email.  
Thanks.]

If memory serves me right, Makoto MATSUSHITA wrote:

 takhus Perhaps the *.TXT files could be periodically regenerated to their 
 takhus current location to 1) avoid a POLA violation and 2) allow for at
 takhus least some RELNOTES without needing DocBook and doc/ (even if they
 takhus may be slightly out of date).

[snip]

 It is true that current.freebsd.org and much of do-it-yourself
 distributions are generated with 'NODOC=YES', since it needs much time
 and disk spaces to process doc.1 target (especially setting up a
 DocBook environment).

My first reaction is, is doing doc.1 *that* much of a problem?  When 
I was testing, it didn't seem like building this consumed much time or 
disk space compared to the rest of the make release process (i.e. 
building world and several kernels).  A checked-out doc/ is 37 MB.

 Removing *.TXT files also makes some difficulties when ordinally make
 buildworld/installworld users want to know what changes are made
 (they should change their CVSup configulation file, checkout doc if
 the repository is CVSuped, install DocBook via ports, and run make(1)
 to get a plaintext of release notes).

I think the only recurring cost that people are going to have to do is
to keep a reasonably current copy of doc/.  Building the docproj port is
a one-time operation.  After that, it takes about 15 seconds of
wallclock time on my workstation to build the TXT version of the release
notes (note that you'll get the SGML sources automatically under src/
release/doc).

 Just like current 'doc' distribution of 'NODOC=YES', it would be helpful
 that *.TXT files are in src/release.

Umm, no, it's not just like the current doc distribution.  If you build
a release with NODOC=YES, you don't get any rendition of the FAQ,
Handbook, etc.  There's no *.TXT files to fall back on.

Here's my thoughts...for the record, I'm weakly opposed to regen-ing
*.TXT versions:  First, I don't want to bloat the repository with oodles
of builds to the *.TXT files.  If we do this, it ought to be be fairly
infrequently, like maybe once or twice a month.

Second, regen-ing needs to be done automatically.  I'm not going to do
it by hand.

Third, let's assume that there's some interest in actually having 
different localized versions of the release notes (note that the 
infrastructure supports it).  What language do we build for the *.TXT 
fallback files?

Finally, there needs to be some boilerplate text on the fallback files
to indicate the generation date of the fallback versions, and a
pseudo-disclaimer that they may be out of date with respect to the
actual state of the code.  If we get the automatic generation problem
solved, this one should be easy.

Like I said, I'm weakly opposed to doing this, but I'm also quite
willing to be swayed.

Cheers,

Bruce.




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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-25 Thread Wilko Bulte

On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 09:58:40AM -0700, Bruce A. Mah wrote:
 [Please keep me as one of the explicit recipients of this email.  

  Removing *.TXT files also makes some difficulties when ordinally make
  buildworld/installworld users want to know what changes are made
  (they should change their CVSup configulation file, checkout doc if
  the repository is CVSuped, install DocBook via ports, and run make(1)
  to get a plaintext of release notes).
 
 I think the only recurring cost that people are going to have to do is
 to keep a reasonably current copy of doc/.  Building the docproj port is

Reasonably current effectively means not current . Aka out of date.

 Umm, no, it's not just like the current doc distribution.  If you build
 a release with NODOC=YES, you don't get any rendition of the FAQ,
 Handbook, etc.  There's no *.TXT files to fall back on.
 
 Here's my thoughts...for the record, I'm weakly opposed to regen-ing
 *.TXT versions:  First, I don't want to bloat the repository with oodles
 of builds to the *.TXT files.  If we do this, it ought to be be fairly
 infrequently, like maybe once or twice a month.

Bad idea.. 

RELNOTES, HARDWARE etc are things that should be up to date. Not 
'a bit uptodate' or 'slightly outdated'.

I really would not like to see the idea being bloated by going this route.

If people think getting the Docbook infrastructure in place is too much
work/time they should accustom themselves to reading the raw Docboot source
files.

 Like I said, I'm weakly opposed to doing this, but I'm also quite
 willing to be swayed.

Please don't be swayed.. ;)

W/
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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-25 Thread Leif Neland

  
  Here's my thoughts...for the record, I'm weakly opposed to regen-ing
  *.TXT versions:  First, I don't want to bloat the repository with oodles
  of builds to the *.TXT files.  If we do this, it ought to be be fairly
  infrequently, like maybe once or twice a month.
 
 Bad idea.. 
 
 RELNOTES, HARDWARE etc are things that should be up to date. Not 
 'a bit uptodate' or 'slightly outdated'.
 
 I really would not like to see the idea being bloated by going this route.
 
As UPDATING may contain information nessecary to run make world, it can't be built by 
make world.
Chicken and egg, methinks...

Leif


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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-25 Thread Antoine Beaupre (LMC)

Hey whatever. Let's just keep a rendered TXT version where it always
(ie. in the src/release... cvs) was but keep the originial as a sgml
version in the doc tree.

Just like ports/INDEX. Only better.

I think it is important to solve the duplication problem we have. It
would be very sad to see a release go out with a wrong X.X-RELEASE
header in the README.TXT file, has it almost happened, if I'm not
mistaken. :)

A.

Leif Neland wrote:
 
  
   Here's my thoughts...for the record, I'm weakly opposed to regen-ing
   *.TXT versions:  First, I don't want to bloat the repository with oodles
   of builds to the *.TXT files.  If we do this, it ought to be be fairly
   infrequently, like maybe once or twice a month.
 
  Bad idea..
 
  RELNOTES, HARDWARE etc are things that should be up to date. Not
  'a bit uptodate' or 'slightly outdated'.
 
  I really would not like to see the idea being bloated by going this route.
 
 As UPDATING may contain information nessecary to run make world, it can't be built 
by make world.
 Chicken and egg, methinks...
 
 Leif
 
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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-25 Thread Wilko Bulte

On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 09:42:07PM +0200, Leif Neland wrote:
   
   Here's my thoughts...for the record, I'm weakly opposed to regen-ing
   *.TXT versions:  First, I don't want to bloat the repository with oodles
   of builds to the *.TXT files.  If we do this, it ought to be be fairly
   infrequently, like maybe once or twice a month.
  
  Bad idea.. 
  
  RELNOTES, HARDWARE etc are things that should be up to date. Not 
  'a bit uptodate' or 'slightly outdated'.
  
  I really would not like to see the idea being bloated by going this route.
  
 As UPDATING may contain information nessecary to run make world, it can't be built 
by make world.
 Chicken and egg, methinks...

Possibly. But I was not refering to UPDATING.

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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-25 Thread Bruce A. Mah

If memory serves me right, Wilko Bulte wrote:
 On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 09:42:07PM +0200, Leif Neland wrote:

  As UPDATING may contain information nessecary to run make world, it can't b
 e built by make world.
  Chicken and egg, methinks...
 
 Possibly. But I was not refering to UPDATING.

Just to clarify, RELNOTESng will not have any effect whatsoever on the 
way that /usr/src/UPDATING is maintained.

Bruce.



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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-25 Thread Leif Neland

 On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 09:42:07PM +0200, Leif Neland wrote:

Here's my thoughts...for the record, I'm weakly opposed to regen-ing
*.TXT versions:  First, I don't want to bloat the repository with oodles
of builds to the *.TXT files.  If we do this, it ought to be be fairly
infrequently, like maybe once or twice a month.
   
   Bad idea.. 
   
   RELNOTES, HARDWARE etc are things that should be up to date. Not 
   'a bit uptodate' or 'slightly outdated'.
   
   I really would not like to see the idea being bloated by going this route.
   
  As UPDATING may contain information nessecary to run make world, it can't be built 
by make world.
  Chicken and egg, methinks...
 
 Possibly. But I was not refering to UPDATING.
 
Sorry. My parser just made a mistake by expanding etc in RELNOTES, HARDWARE etc

Leif


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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-25 Thread Warner Losh

In message [EMAIL PROTECTED] Antoine Beaupre (LMC) writes:
: Hey whatever. Let's just keep a rendered TXT version where it always
: (ie. in the src/release... cvs) was but keep the originial as a sgml
: version in the doc tree.

UPDATING will continue to be a flat file, or I will no longer maintain
it.

Warner

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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-25 Thread Warner Losh

In message [EMAIL PROTECTED] Warner Losh writes:
: In message [EMAIL PROTECTED] Antoine Beaupre (LMC) writes:
: : Hey whatever. Let's just keep a rendered TXT version where it always
: : (ie. in the src/release... cvs) was but keep the originial as a sgml
: : version in the doc tree.
: 
: UPDATING will continue to be a flat file, or I will no longer maintain
: it.

I should also add but I don't think this proposal applies to
UPDATING to the end of that.

Warner

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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-25 Thread Bruce A. Mah

If memory serves me right, Dima Dorfman wrote:

 On a slightly related note, do you object, or
 have plans to, build the release notes with the web site?  It would
 solve this problem very nicely.

Hi Dima--

No objections, but no plans right now either.  Mostly because I don't 
know enough about the Web site build.  Got any ideas?  :-)

I'm not sure if it will *solve* the problem, but at least it will 
allevitate it somewhat.  And it's aesthetically more pleasing to me (if 
that counts for anything).

Note that this is a fairly new capability...we currently don't have a 
link for -CURRENT or 4-STABLE release notes.  There might be some 
issues with this although I can't think of any off-hand.

 I understand that relnotes will be in
 src/, so this would have to be an optional part of the build, but at
 least having them built on www.freebsd.org would suffice.

Yeah, it should be optional.  The thing-that-generates-the-Web-pages 
would need the src/release/ module (somewhere in its filesystem, not 
necessarily in /usr/src/release), plus doc/.  RELNOTESng doesn't need a 
complete src/.

Bruce.



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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-25 Thread Dima Dorfman

Bruce A. Mah [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 If memory serves me right, Makoto MATSUSHITA wrote:
 
  takhus Perhaps the *.TXT files could be periodically regenerated to their 
  takhus current location to 1) avoid a POLA violation and 2) allow for at
  takhus least some RELNOTES without needing DocBook and doc/ (even if they
  takhus may be slightly out of date).
 
 [snip]

 Umm, no, it's not just like the current doc distribution.  If you build
 a release with NODOC=YES, you don't get any rendition of the FAQ,
 Handbook, etc.  There's no *.TXT files to fall back on.
 
 Here's my thoughts...for the record, I'm weakly opposed to regen-ing
 *.TXT versions:  First, I don't want to bloat the repository with oodles
 of builds to the *.TXT files.  If we do this, it ought to be be fairly
 infrequently, like maybe once or twice a month.

 [ snip other good reasons not to regen and commit TXT files ]

I agree completely.  On a slightly related note, do you object, or
have plans to, build the release notes with the web site?  It would
solve this problem very nicely.  I understand that relnotes will be in
src/, so this would have to be an optional part of the build, but at
least having them built on www.freebsd.org would suffice.

Dima Dorfman
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-25 Thread Makoto MATSUSHITA


Sorry for late reply.

bmah My first reaction is, is doing doc.1 *that* much of a problem?  When 
bmah I was testing, it didn't seem like building this consumed much time or 
bmah disk space compared to the rest of the make release process (i.e. 
bmah building world and several kernels).  A checked-out doc/ is 37 MB.

It takes long to fetch all distfiles for docproj ports. Sometimes they
are updated. Sometimes they can't fetch. Sometimes text/docproj can't
build (we can't build textproc/jade _now_, since PATCHFILES are already
outdated, its path is old, and ftp.freesoftware.com is still offline :-)
speaking of textproc/jade, it's easy to fix and I've already have a
patch but not yet tested).

For ordinally make-build/installworld users, how many people
understands that they should install textproc/docproj _only_ for
making their plaintext relnotes? Most of them don't need SGML-whatever
converter for other situations.

If installing textproc/docproj is essential for getting all documents
in src/, it should not be a port (src/contrib will be their friends);
if it's not essential, a port is ok. And in my opinion, relnotes are
tightly associated with src/ components just like src/UPDATING.

Hmm...

Maybe all of my concerns is that getting relnotes (formatting is not
a problem; plaintext will be easy, but I don't argue that the only
version is PDF) without having some processing/compilation (installing
some ports, type 'make' command, etc).

If generating relnotes are _optional_ (Makefiles don't _enforce_ us to
install textproc/docproj for all machines which run make buildworld
or make release), it's ok if somebody's generated version (format is
not the matter; plaintext, HTML, PDF, anything) of relnotes are
avaliable via ftp, web, or any protocols of the Internet at any time.

-- -
Makoto `MAR' MATSUSHITA

P.S.: I'm totally agree with RENOTESng system. It'll help to improve
the project and the quality of document itself. But please keep some
rooms for lazy guys (like me) who refuses to change their style :-)

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[RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-24 Thread Bruce A. Mah

(Apologies to -doc people who have probably heard this ad nauseum.)

Over the past few months, I've been working on a project that I've
taken to calling RELNOTESng, which is the overhaul of RELNOTES.TXT and
related files that we package along with a FreeBSD distribution.
I've been soliciting feedback from the other -doc folks, and it's time
to socialize this out to a wider audience.

The main problem this is intended to solve is that there's a lot of
information in many different files, and not all of its is
consistent.  For example, a list of hardware supported by FreeBSD can
currently be found in four different places (the alpha and i386
RELNOTES.TXT files, HARDWARE.TXT, and the Handbook).

What I've done is to reorganize and reformat all of the *.TXT files.
The new versions of these files are done in DocBook/SGML, which is the
markup language used for the Handbook, FAQ, and so on.

This gives us several distinct advantages:

1.  By using conditional inclusion of text, we can have one set of
source files that contains platform-independent text plus text
applicable to particular architectures (no more double commits for
each new release note).  Looking down the road, when we support
other architectures (for example, ia64 or ppc), we'll have a
scalable way of handling them.

2.  By going to DocBook, we can produce release notes in formats other
than plain ASCII text; for example, we can do HTML or PDF.  We
gain greater readability, plus we can take advantages of features
such as hyperlinks within documents.  Of course the boot floppies
still get the TXT files.

3.  By adopting the same naming conventions and directory structures
as the doc/ subtree, we can support translations of release notes,
if the translation teams are so inclined.

4.  Reorganizing the *.TXT files elminates some redundant information
and reduces the number of files that people have to read through
(they're a bit longer, but better-organized).

There are two disadvantages to going this route.  I think they're
fairly minor:

1.  Generating a set of release notes requires the DocBook toolchain
to be built, as well as the doc/ subtree.  Note that RELNOTESng
will have absolutely no effect on the buildworld/installworld
procedure.

2.  It raises the bar a bit for committers wanting to make changes to
the release notes, since they'll need to make changes to the
DocBook files.

Barring objections, I want to commit RELNOTESng, plus a patch to src/
release/Makefile, to the CVS tree.  RELNOTESng still needs a bit of
testing, and so for now, I have it controlled by a make(1) flag
defaulting to off.  Once the bugs have been shaken out, I'll make
RELNOTESng the default and stop maintaining the *.TXT files. Eventually,
the *.TXT files will get removed.

There's a snapshot of RELNOTESng for -CURRENT, updated irregularly,
at:

http://people.freebsd.org/~bmah/relnotes/

It contains PDF, HTML, and TXT versions of the various documents, as
well as a tarball of my working sources, the patch for
src/release/Makefile to integrate RELNOTESng into the release build,
and an ISO of a 5.0-CURRENT, i386 release I did with RELNOTESng
enabled.

I'd very much like to get comments from people.

Bruce.



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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-24 Thread Alfred Perlstein

* Bruce A. Mah [EMAIL PROTECTED] [010424 09:04] wrote:
 (Apologies to -doc people who have probably heard this ad nauseum.)
 
 Over the past few months, I've been working on a project that I've
 taken to calling RELNOTESng, which is the overhaul of RELNOTES.TXT and
 related files that we package along with a FreeBSD distribution.
 I've been soliciting feedback from the other -doc folks, and it's time
 to socialize this out to a wider audience.
 
 The main problem this is intended to solve is that there's a lot of
 information in many different files, and not all of its is
 consistent.  For example, a list of hardware supported by FreeBSD can
 currently be found in four different places (the alpha and i386
 RELNOTES.TXT files, HARDWARE.TXT, and the Handbook).
 
 What I've done is to reorganize and reformat all of the *.TXT files.
 The new versions of these files are done in DocBook/SGML, which is the
 markup language used for the Handbook, FAQ, and so on.
[snip]
 
 I'd very much like to get comments from people.

Sounds like some excellent work that was long over due.  Go for it. :)

-- 
-Alfred Perlstein - [[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
http://www.egr.unlv.edu/~slumos/on-netbsd.html

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Re: [RFC] RELNOTESng for 5-CURRENT

2001-04-24 Thread Kris Kennaway

On Tue, Apr 24, 2001 at 09:25:34AM -0700, Alfred Perlstein wrote:

 Sounds like some excellent work that was long over due.  Go for it. :)

Agreed.

I've always found there are doc hackers willing to help with markup
problems on request, so I don't think that's a serious issue.

Kris

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