Hi Pulsarers, Thanks for your suggestions.
I think we need to make consensus on the following issues: #1 What should be included in the RN (release note)? Only include major changes (important features/enhancements/bug fixes) in list form rather than a raw dump of PRs. Reason: - The target audience is Pulsar developers and users, who usually skim RN to look for features that matter to them, so it is necessary to have this place for easier search. - For each release, to help users know the highlights in a quicker way, usually we write tech blogs [1] to explain more details (e.g. What has changed?, Why has it changed?, How is the user impacted?, What does the user need to do now?), so RN can be a "simple list" of what we have achieved. - Users can get changelogs on GitHub if they want to know every change of a release. #2 How to create a quality RN efficiently? If RN is regarded as an afterthought and finished as a last-minute task, it is likely not written well. Instead of rushing, treating RN as a part of development reduces release manager's workload and makes communication more coordinated. Consequently, **the process of the current workflow can be improved**: 2.a. Create guidelines/standards for writing a qualified PR title (and description) and git commit message. →This really matters for release manager to know the changes and cut a release. 2.b. Give PR with corresponding labels . e.g. `release/note-required`, labels related to PR changes (such as `component/functions`, `component/java-client`) →So that automatic tools knows contain which PR and assign the PR to the correct chapter in RN. 2.c. Create templates for RN. 2.d. Find tools to generate RN automatically based on qualified PR title, PR labels, and RN template. In this case, if each PR information is provided in a consistent and clear way, RN can be automatically generated in a quick manner. Also it saves release manager's life. [1] Tech blog example: https://pulsar.apache.org/blog/2021/09/23/Apache-Pulsar-2-8-1/ >>>>>>>>>>>>>> On 2021/12/3, 12:04, "Yunze Xu" <y...@streamnative.io.INVALID> wrote: First I agree with Jonathan that we should perform some changes with the original PR descriptions. Then, classifying these PRs is also necessary, otherwise the release notes would be meaningless. There are a lot of PRs that should be classfied in Misc part of https://github.com/apache/pulsar/pull/12425 <https://github.com/apache/pulsar/pull/12425> and I also gave some comments in the PR. IMO, it’s okay to ignore the PRs that only fix some typos or fix some flaky tests. But I found many PRs in Misc part should also be noted. We should not sacrifice the release quality for a new release like 2.9.1. > 2021年12月2日 下午7:11，Enrico Olivelli <eolive...@gmail.com> 写道： > > Hello community, > > There is an open discussion on the Pulsar 2.9.0 release notes PR: > https://github.com/apache/pulsar/pull/12425 > > I have created the block of release notes by downloading the list of PR > using some GitHub API. > Then I have manually classified: > - News and Noteworthy: cool things in the Release > - Breaking Changes: things you MUST know when you upgrade > - Java Client, C++ Client, Python Client, Functions/Pulsar IO > > The goal is to provide useful information for people who want to upgrade > Pulsar. > > My problems are: > - PR titles are often badly written, but I don't want to fix all of them > (typos, tenses of verbs, formatting) > - There are more than 300 PRs, I don't want to classify them manually, I > just highlighted the most important from my point of view > > If for 2.9.0 we still keep a list of PR, then I believe that the current > status of the patch is good. > > If we want to do it another way, then I am now asking if there is someone > who can volunteer in fixing and classifying the list of 300 PRs, it is a > huge task. > > There is already much more work to do to get 2.9.0 completely released (and > also PulsarAdapters) and we have to cut 2.9.1 as soon as possible due to a > bad regression found in 2.9.0. > > Thanks > Enrico
