Release notes... [was Re: [VOTE] Release ServiceMix 3.0.1]

[Dan Diephouse <da...@envoisolutions.com>]

On 11/20/06, robert burrell donkin <ro...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> i strongly recommend adding RELEASE_NOTES. these are an important form
> of guerrilla advertising. yes, tools like maven can generate lots of
> documentation about the release but this doesn't replace a
> RELEASE_NOTES explaining the project, inviting people to get involved
> and inducating where other information can be found.


In XFire we made our release notes our download page. This allowed us to
inform the users, welcome them into the project, and provide up to date
errata whenever they went to download. In the days of maven, a lot of people
don't even download a distribution any more: in the month of October roughly
60% of the XFire users downloaded the binary distribution and 40% downloaded
via Maven. If you factor in the amount of people that actually read the
release notes, I think we are now in a situation where we have much less
than half reading them (maybe less than 10%). Making the release notes the
download page makes sure 100% of the people see it. Sticking it in the
distribution also has other issues, namely people don't maintain the release
notes and they can not be updated with errata after the release.

So I think that having a release notes in the distribution is overrated and
using the website can be a better approach.

- Dan

*

-- 
Dan Diephouse
Envoi Solutions
http://envoisolutions.com | http://netzooid.com/blog

Re: Release notes... [was Re: [VOTE] Release ServiceMix 3.0.1]

[robert burrell donkin <ro...@gmail.com>]

On 11/22/06, Dan Diephouse <da...@envoisolutions.com> wrote:
> On 11/20/06, robert burrell donkin <ro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > i strongly recommend adding RELEASE_NOTES. these are an important form
> > of guerrilla advertising. yes, tools like maven can generate lots of
> > documentation about the release but this doesn't replace a
> > RELEASE_NOTES explaining the project, inviting people to get involved
> > and inducating where other information can be found.
>
>
> In XFire we made our release notes our download page. This allowed us to
> inform the users, welcome them into the project, and provide up to date
> errata whenever they went to download. In the days of maven, a lot of people
> don't even download a distribution any more: in the month of October roughly
> 60% of the XFire users downloaded the binary distribution and 40% downloaded
> via Maven. If you factor in the amount of people that actually read the
> release notes, I think we are now in a situation where we have much less
> than half reading them (maybe less than 10%). Making the release notes the
> download page makes sure 100% of the people see it. Sticking it in the
> distribution also has other issues, namely people don't maintain the release
> notes and they can not be updated with errata after the release.

i never intended to advocate removing them from elsewhere, just that
they need to exist and and added to the release

the same content can (and should) be reused on the download page, news
items, announcements posted to mailing lists and grassroots media.

> So I think that having a release notes in the distribution is overrated and
> using the website can be a better approach.

IMO should do both (and the rest)

probably wasn't as clear as i could have been: i'll try to improve my
advice in the future

- robert

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Re: Release notes... [was Re: [VOTE] Release ServiceMix 3.0.1]

[Henri Yandell <fl...@gmail.com>]

On 11/21/06, Dan Diephouse <da...@envoisolutions.com> wrote:
> On 11/20/06, robert burrell donkin <ro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > i strongly recommend adding RELEASE_NOTES. these are an important form
> > of guerrilla advertising. yes, tools like maven can generate lots of
> > documentation about the release but this doesn't replace a
> > RELEASE_NOTES explaining the project, inviting people to get involved
> > and inducating where other information can be found.
>
>
> In XFire we made our release notes our download page. This allowed us to
> inform the users, welcome them into the project, and provide up to date
> errata whenever they went to download. In the days of maven, a lot of people
> don't even download a distribution any more: in the month of October roughly
> 60% of the XFire users downloaded the binary distribution and 40% downloaded
> via Maven. If you factor in the amount of people that actually read the
> release notes, I think we are now in a situation where we have much less
> than half reading them (maybe less than 10%). Making the release notes the
> download page makes sure 100% of the people see it. Sticking it in the
> distribution also has other issues, namely people don't maintain the release
> notes and they can not be updated with errata after the release.
>
> So I think that having a release notes in the distribution is overrated and
> using the website can be a better approach.

Legacy is the biggest plus for putting the release notes in the
zip/tar.gz's; having to support all the old versions on the website
gets to be a pain, and is a long-term commitment.

I grabbed an old version of Cactus today from the archives because
something I was looking at needed it, and I recall Leo grabbing Apache
1.0 at an ApacheCon to try and test whether old C builds still built
on modern Linux boxes. Atomic releases are nice because you can
largely forget about them.

Hen

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