Re: Making releases

[Reuben Thomas]

On 16 March 2011 16:45, Jim Meyering <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Currently the gnupload command is emitted at the end of a successful
> "make stable".  Just because that succeeded does not always mean I am
> ready to release.

OK, so an extra target is needed. I used to use "make release". This
would seem to make sense to cover uploading and announcing the
release.

> Do you feel like adding one?

Sure. If you agreed with my idea of a "release" target, then it'd be a
hook for that.

> You should know better than to quote the man page
> when there is texinfo documentation.
> Read the info doc's description of --print-directory.

The info manual says:

  The `-s' or `--silent' flag to `make' prevents all echoing, as if
all commands started with `@'.

The documentation for --print-directory indeed says that -s stops its
being turned on automatically, so that would seem to apply here, but
without knowing about -w/--print-directory I would not have reached
that conclusion. -s's paragraph needs an xref, I think. If you don't
think I'm just wilfully misreading (or lazily underreading) the
manual, I'll make a patch. (Using man pages in the first instance is
definitely lazy on my part, but I want a single command to bring up
relevant documentation. I've tried alias man=info in the past, as info
handily falls back to man pages, but quickly gave up for a reason I've
now forgotten; I'll try again.)

> I'm not terribly gung-ho on making the process completely
> non-interactive, so haven't pursued this, but if you find
> a noninvasive way (or one that's universally accepted by maintainers who
> use these rules) to make it do what you want, propose a patch.

I'm not trying to make the process interactive, I'm trying to reduce
the number of fixed commands one has to type. At the moment it goes:

CMD1
[do something]
CMD2
[do something else]
...

where CMD1 and CMD2 are always the same, and, worse, I have to
remember what they are and in what order to type them. I'm after a
workflow that goes

CMD1
[do something]
[do something else]
...

with prompts as necessary. If we really disagree, it's probably over
which commands naturally go together, and perhaps it's worth
explaining that I prefer to have everything (distcheck, dist, stable)
run again at the moment of release, Just In Case.

I'll have another think next time it annoys me.

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