Jenkins 1.625 has no release note?

[John Mellor]

The changelog on the web site incredibly shows no changes between 1.624 and 1.625.  This weird kind of entry was also done for the 1.623 release, although someone retrofitted the changelog to state “No major user-visible changes in this release.”, whatever that is supposed to mean.  If there are no changes, why was it released?  Empty changelogs are just worng.

 

The changelog is supposed to be there to show why the users should upgrade to it or skip it, and these notes obviously fail that test.  The smallest changes should always be noted.  Everyone in this business understands that, or their company would be out of business.  The log from git/svn/hg/ec/si/whatever V.C system is being used is an easy way to generate this changelog.

 

When is Jenkins getting back to real changelog messages like it used to have?

[Daniel Beck]

On 19.08.2015, at 15:24, John Mellor <John....@esentire.com> wrote:

> The changelog on the web site incredibly shows no changes between 1.624 and 1.625.

1.625 has not actually been uploaded, and the tag in Git is possibly off as well (several commits from the weekend are missing). I'm hoping to grab KK today to find out what happened. As long as this is unresolved, the changelog needs to wait.

> This weird kind of entry was also done for the 1.623 release, although someone retrofitted the changelog to state “No major user-visible changes in this release.”, whatever that is supposed to mean.

It means there are no major user-visible changes. (See below.)

> If there are no changes, why was it released?

Jenkins is released weekly. I'd hope that KK finds the time to check whether there are actually changes scheduled before doing a release, but at least for 1.623 this obviously didn't happen. Notably, it hasn't been necessary to do so in years AFAICT, as there was always something that could be mentioned.

> The changelog is supposed to be there to show why the users should upgrade to it or skip it, and these notes obviously fail that test. The smallest changes should always be noted.

Let's roleplay: You're in charge of the changelog. 1.623 has been released (you're not in charge of that), and you're looking for what needs to be mentioned in the changelog. This is the diff to the previous release:

https://github.com/jenkinsci/jenkins/compare/jenkins-1.622...jenkins-1.623

So, what do you post? That @Nonnull annotations were added to the hudson.model.Result class? That a logging level was changed from FINE to FINER? That a class that was never used and never part of the public API has been removed?

I decided to just write that there are no notable user-visible changes.

It wouldn't take long for the complaints to come in if we actually mentioned *everything* that gets changed in the changelog.

[Matthew...@diamond.ac.uk]

When I saw "no major user-visible changes", I thought that "user" referred just to Jenkins users (rather than Jenkins administrators), and hence to me the message meant "no major UI nor behaviour changes".

A major refactor might have "no major user-visible changes", but would be high-risk. So, the existing message tells you about the anticipated effect of putting on the new release, but does not tell you about the size of the changes. I might be the only one to mis-read the message, but otherwise, maybe a clearer message would be something like "Only trivial changes in this release".

Hope that helps.

Thanks
Matthew

--
This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential, copyright and or privileged material, and are for the use of the intended addressee only. If you are not the intended addressee or an authorised recipient of the addressee please notify us of receipt by returning the e-mail and do not use, copy, retain, distribute or disclose the information in or attached to the e-mail.
Any opinions expressed within this e-mail are those of the individual and not necessarily of Diamond Light Source Ltd.
Diamond Light Source Ltd. cannot guarantee that this e-mail or any attachments are free from viruses and we cannot accept liability for any damage which you may sustain as a result of software viruses which may be transmitted in or with the message.
Diamond Light Source Limited (company no. 4375679). Registered in England and Wales with its registered office at Diamond House, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 0DE, United Kingdom

[Daniel Beck]

'No notable changes' would probably have sufficed and prevented the entire "what's a user?" confusion, true.

Then there would only be the question 'why was this even released?' -- probably just sticking to the established schedule. Given that we've kept to a weekly release schedule for years, I'm actually surprised this is the first time this has come up.

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Jenkins Users" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to jenkinsci-use...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/jenkinsci-users/6836E1DC2DDC174C9D64B7860E5AF5FC9EF30CE9%40EXCHMBX03.fed.cclrc.ac.uk.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Matthew...@diamond.ac.uk]

> 'No notable changes' would probably have sufficed and prevented the entire "what's a user?" confusion, true.

Works for me.
Thanks

[Daniel Beck]

FWIW the packages for 1.625 have been released, and I fixed the changelog.

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Jenkins Users" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to jenkinsci-use...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/jenkinsci-users/6836E1DC2DDC174C9D64B7860E5AF5FC9EF30D25%40EXCHMBX03.fed.cclrc.ac.uk.