Qt Contributor Summit 2019 - Releasing Notes

tl;dr

• The Releasing Dashboard in JIRA provides a good overview of upcoming releases, Qt Creator will be added there
• We should list all contributors of a release in the ChangeLog (AP Jani Heikkinen)
• Encourage people to help editing ChangeLogs (gerrit in-editing) (AP everyone)
• Next time for release meeting will be (also) announced in IRC channel topic (AP Jani Heikkinen)

Change Logs

• List names of all people who contributed to a release in the modules change log.
  • Qt Creator has a script to normalize this: https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt-creator/qt-creator.git/tree/dist/changes-4.10.2.md?h=4.10
  • -> Nobody objected to the idea :)

• What should be the base of the changelog? (last patch release in current branch, forward merges?)
  • From users perspective it should be last current branch, but that's a lot of (double) work
  • New cherry-pick only mode will make more work

• Put changelog entry into files instead of commit message
  • e.g. named after bug number ...
  • gets merged into ChangeLog before release
  • Advantage: Can be edited
  • Disadvantage: Yet another file

• Better tooling for ChangeLog entries?
  • Crowd-sourcing it via a shared platform
  • Proposal: Use editing in Gerrit for that (and make it's clear that it's ok to edit)

• Biggest problems: qtbase, qtdeclarative
  • Split up by module in qtbase?

• Proposal: Use change log only for major changes
  • BC issues
  • security fixes (!)
  • new features (high level)
  • new dependencies
  • -> no consensus on this

• Are ChangeLogs being read/used by many?
  • Do people know that there's a ChangeLog?
  • Place it more prominently?

• Who's the audience?
  • Interested developers
  • Packaging Managers / administrators
  • Do they really need polished sentences?

Transparency of the Release Process

• Cancellations of release meetings is not publicly announced
• Suggestion: Announce next meeting in #qt-releases channel topic