Updating release notes

We use towncrier to maintain the release history. This is where we keep users up to date with new features and breaking changes.

During development

Where relevant, merge requests should include a “news fragment” with a brief user-focused description of the change. This is a requirement for backward-incompatible changes, and encouraged for features and bug-fixes. Refactoring, test-only changes, and other things that are not directly visible to users do not generally need news fragments.

File names

News fragments are stored in newsfragments/<section>/<issue>.<type>.rst; a link to the issue will automatically be included in the release notes.

For changes that do not have an associated issue, use newsfragments/<section>/+mr<merge-request>.<type>.rst; this requires creating the merge request first in order to get its ID. (In fact, any first segment starting with + is fine, but the +mr<merge-request> convention helps us to avoid collisions and makes tracking easier.)

News fragment sections

We have the following sections for news fragments, each of which corresponds to a section in the assembled release notes:

  • Server (newsfragments/server/): Backend code on the debusine server, especially changes to debusine/db/ and debusine/server/. This includes Server, Internal, and Wait tasks.

  • Web UI (newsfragments/web/): The debusine web user interface, especially changes to debusine/web/.

  • Client (newsfragments/client/): The debusine client, especially changes to debusine/client/.

  • Workflows (newsfragments/workflows/): Workflows, especially changes to debusine/server/workflows/.

  • Tasks (newsfragments/tasks/): Tasks, especially changes to debusine/tasks/, debusine/server/tasks/, and debusine/signing/tasks.

  • Worker (newsfragments/worker/): The debusine worker, especially changes to debusine/worker/.

  • Signing (newsfragments/signing/): The debusine signing worker, especially changes to debusine/signing/.

  • General (newsfragments/): Anything that does not fit into the above categories, including significant codebase-wide changes.

News fragment types

We use the following types to categorize news fragments:

  • incompatible: An incompatible change.

  • feature: A new feature.

  • bugfix: A bug fix.

  • doc: A documentation improvement.

  • misc: An issue has been closed, but it is not of interest to users. (This also includes issues about problems with other changes that were introduced since the last release; it doesn’t normally make sense to document these separately.)

Writing style

News fragments should be in the imperative mood (i.e. “Fix something”, not “Fixes something” or “Fixed something”).

They should be complete sentences, ending with a full stop.

They may use reStructuredText features, such as :ref: for cross-references.

Each news fragment should generally be on a single line. towncrier will wrap them as necessary when assembling the release notes. If a single issue needs more than one entry with the same section and type, then put each one on a separate line.

If an issue is relevant to multiple sections or types, it may have multiple news fragments to cover them all.

Examples

If you made a breaking change to a workflow in response to issue #42, then you would put a news fragment in newsfragments/workflows/42.incompatible.rst.

If you made an important bug fix to a server database model in merge request !999 with no associated issue, then you would put a news fragment in newsfragments/server/+mr999.bugfix.rst.

If you added a new feature to the web UI in response to issue #123, then you would put a news fragment in newsfragments/web/123.feature.rst.

At release time

The release manager runs towncrier build --version <new-version> to assemble the new release notes. They may edit the result to improve readability (for example, to consolidate items that relate to the same overall topic), or to add significant changes that did not come with news fragments.