Feature (workflow) request: conflict-free way of creating NEWS.md

[tkf]

As an occasional contributor, I find resolving conflict in NEWS.md rather cumbersome, especially when it is the only conflict that is blocking review/merge. For large projects, I think it's common to create a news file in a conflict-free manner. Can you implement such a work flow in Julia?

Here's a few examples that I know:

• Generate a single news file from "news fragments":

  • CPython: Use CLI blurb to generate a news file from files in Misc/NEWS.d/.

  • IPython: Use a custom script to merge news files: https://github.com/ipython/ipython/tree/master/docs/source/whatsnew/pr

• Generate a news file using GitHub API:

  • Numpy uses a script to generate a changelog file using GitHub API. This approach presumably depends on the rule for writing the commit message (using prefixes like ENH and BUG).

[Keno]

I made a suggestion here: #30592 (comment). It's similar to the numpy approach, but lets people write snippets explicitly in the commit message to end up in NEWS. I think that's better than automatically adding every commit message to NEWS, since a lot of them may not be NEWS worthy.

[StefanKarpinski]

I dislike that approach because it’s non-obvious how to edit a NEWS entry after the fact. It seems like you’d have to generate the NEWS file and then edit it? What happens if it gets regenerated again later? With a directory full of snippets, it’s obvious how to edit each one. It’s weird for input to the build to come from the commit log.

[Keno]

I'm not suggesting it be an input to the build, I'm suggesting that NEWS.md be generated once as part of the release branch creation process and then edited into the actual release notes. I guess it doesn't matter too much whether it's a separate file or part of the commit message. Maybe the file thing is just simpler and cleaner.

[Keno]

So in the file model, to make a release branch we'd then in the same commit bump the version number, and remove the NEWS.md chunks, and then the first commit on the release branch is to create a merged NEWS.md file?

[tkf]

That's what I was thinking.

[stev47]

Git itself actually supports per-file configurable merge-drivers (using .gitattributes) and the supplied union merge-driver is often used for changelogs but there are also custom ones in use.

So I somewhat see this issue as a GitHub limitation and people have been asking for this feature for a long time. If someone can get GitHub to support that it would certainly be the easiest option.

[tkf]

Thanks. I didn't know about the merge driver. It sounds super useful.

I still think "news fragment file" is a good solution, though. We need to create the links to the issues with a script anyway.