Semiautomatic way for better "What's new" -file

[Jori Mäntysalo]

Slightly related to #20026, i.e. changing default colors for a small part
of Sage:

Could we have a specific trac keyword for user-visible changes? Then we
could make a semi-automatic "What's new in version X" better. Anything
that deprecates something should always have that keyword set. But not
only them, also those tickets that change some default value.

As an example, some versions ago .plot() for poset gave the picture
upside-down with dot2tex installed. Ticket correcting that would have the
keyword set.

(Warning: Got the idea 15 minutes ago. Can be a very bad idea.)

--
Jori Mäntysalo

[Nathann Cohen]

It sounds to me like a good idea. We could build a list of those
tickets right before a public release and publish it somehow, with
links toward the tickets.

It would mean trying our best to make the tickets title/description a
bit more "user-friendly" than usual, and it might comfort those of us
who are always worried about our users being taken aback by the new
changes introduced by an update.

Of course that's only useful if we all agree on something like that
and try to enforce it all together.

Nathann

[Jeroen Demeyer]

I think writing better ticket titles could also help a lot. Maybe we
could actually ask reviewers of a ticket to also review the ticket title
to ensure it makes sense.

People should also change titles after better understanding the bug or
writing a fix. For example I changed

#20025: is_prime_power fails on some inputs

to

#20025: is_prime_power fails on powers of 30011

[Jori Mäntysalo]

On Wed, 10 Feb 2016, Jeroen Demeyer wrote:

> I think writing better ticket titles could also help a lot.

True, but there are many tickets for each release.

I think this as a sysadmin viewpoint. We upgrade some software version N
to version N+1. And now write a message to users about upgrade: "Service
break will start at... This version contains following changes: . . .".

And the list of changes should be those that might surprise some user.

--
Jori Mäntysalo