Hello Mentors,

a user reported that some NEWS entries I wrote recently are hard to
understand and suggested few improvements.
Is it allowed to edit old NEWS entries, at the benefit of users
upgrading from Bookworm to Trixie?
(unstable/testing users won't see the edited NEWS)

Lorenzo

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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Copy: [email protected] (Lorenzo)

On Monday, April 14, 2025 9:30:15 AM Mountain Standard Time Lorenzo
wrote:

Hello Mentors,

a user reported that some NEWS entries I wrote recently are hard to understand and suggested few improvements.
Is it allowed to edit old NEWS entries, at the benefit of users
upgrading from Bookworm to Trixie?
(unstable/testing users won't see the edited NEWS)

I don’t know of any reason why they can’t be edited, especially if the purpose is just to clarify information that is already there (that’s
what unstable/testing feedback is for). If the changes are so large
that you consider that even unstable/testing users need to see them,
simply bump the version number the NEWS entry applies to.

--
Soren Stoutner
[email protected]
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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, 14 Apr 2025 09:52:23 -0700
Soren Stoutner <[email protected]> wrote:

I don’t know of any reason why they can’t be edited, especially if
the purpose is just to clarify information that is already there
(that’s what unstable/testing feedback is for). If the changes are
so large that you consider that even unstable/testing users need to
see them, simply bump the version number the NEWS entry applies to.

Soren,
thanks for confirming

Lorenzo

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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi Lorenzo,

Lorenzo <[email protected]> writes:

Hello Mentors,

a user reported that some NEWS entries I wrote recently are hard to understand and suggested few improvements.
Is it allowed to edit old NEWS entries, at the benefit of users
upgrading from Bookworm to Trixie?
(unstable/testing users won't see the edited NEWS)

I'm not aware of any prohibition against this, and there's at least one
reason why your motivation to improve NEWS entries for Bookworm2Trixie
upgrades is something commendable:

Debian is for its users; NEWS interrupts upgrades; if NEWS is not
important, or if it isn't useful, then that NEWS wastes an unbounded
number of users' time. Consequently, NEWS should be important, and NEWS
should not taste users' time.

So thank you! :) Doing this ahead of time, defensively, produces the
situation where no news is good news.

Oh, but please update (or allow your editor to update) the date stamp on
the relevant NEWS entries. They look something like this:

-- You Name <[email protected]> Mon, 14 Apr 2025 18:06:58 $timezone


Kind regards,
Nicholas

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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi Nicholas,

On Mon, Apr 14, 2025 at 09:07:36PM -0400, Nicholas D Steeves wrote:

Lorenzo <[email protected]> writes:

Hello Mentors,

a user reported that some NEWS entries I wrote recently are hard to understand and suggested few improvements.
Is it allowed to edit old NEWS entries, at the benefit of users
upgrading from Bookworm to Trixie?
(unstable/testing users won't see the edited NEWS)

I'm not aware of any prohibition against this, and there's at least one reason why your motivation to improve NEWS entries for Bookworm2Trixie upgrades is something commendable:

Debian is for its users; NEWS interrupts upgrades; if NEWS is not
important, or if it isn't useful, then that NEWS wastes an unbounded
number of users' time. Consequently, NEWS should be important, and NEWS should not taste users' time.

So thank you! :) Doing this ahead of time, defensively, produces the situation where no news is good news.

Oh, but please update (or allow your editor to update) the date stamp on
the relevant NEWS entries. They look something like this:

-- You Name <[email protected]> Mon, 14 Apr 2025 18:06:58 $timezone

I passed on this advice to a maintainer who was consolidating two
entries where the second one superseded the first but to my surprise the
new consolidated entry was presented again on package upgrade due to the timestamp even though the relevant version had been kept (at the later
of the two relevant versions).

Is this what you would expect? It doesn't seem optimal to use the
timestamp rather than the package version to decide what to present.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi Andrew,

Andrew Bower <[email protected]> writes:

On Mon, Apr 14, 2025 at 09:07:36PM -0400, Nicholas D Steeves wrote:

Lorenzo <[email protected]> writes:

Hello Mentors,

a user reported that some NEWS entries I wrote recently are hard to
understand and suggested few improvements.
Is it allowed to edit old NEWS entries, at the benefit of users
upgrading from Bookworm to Trixie?
(unstable/testing users won't see the edited NEWS)

I'm not aware of any prohibition against this, and there's at least one
reason why your motivation to improve NEWS entries for Bookworm2Trixie
upgrades is something commendable:

Debian is for its users; NEWS interrupts upgrades; if NEWS is not
important, or if it isn't useful, then that NEWS wastes an unbounded
number of users' time. Consequently, NEWS should be important, and NEWS
should not taste users' time.

So thank you! :) Doing this ahead of time, defensively, produces the
situation where no news is good news.

Oh, but please update (or allow your editor to update) the date stamp on
the relevant NEWS entries. They look something like this:

-- You Name <[email protected]> Mon, 14 Apr 2025 18:06:58 $timezone

I passed on this advice to a maintainer who was consolidating two
entries where the second one superseded the first but to my surprise the
new consolidated entry was presented again on package upgrade due to the timestamp even though the relevant version had been kept (at the later
of the two relevant versions).

Previously we talked about editing entries. That's a simple case. To
the best of my knowledge, this is the first time you've mentioned "consolidating two entries".

It was Soren who advocated for adding another entry, btw. Is there
where you got the "superceded" idea? What do you mean by that, and what
is your source for how entries are supposed to "supercede" each other?

Is this what you would expect? It doesn't seem optimal to use the
timestamp rather than the package version to decide what to present.

I expected that you would manually test your work before uploading (or
asking for sponsorship), because this kind of thing cannot be screened
for with CI. As far as I know the timestamp is for human beings. It
sounds like what probably happened is that you added a second NEWS entry
with a new version and assumed that the older NEWS entry would be
skipped. The logic is like this:

Stable has 1.0-1
Testing has 1.5-1
Stable-next will have 1.5-1

All up-to-date users in testing have been exposed to all NEWS entries
between 1.0-1 and 1.5-1, as they updated. When users do stable2testing
or when they will do an oldstable2stable upgrade (in the future), they
will get all NEWS entries between 1.0-1 and 1.5-1 as a big batch <- this
is why I readily agreed with your solution of editing the single bad
NEWS entry rather than adding a new one.

Of course, this is all speculation and a probable waste of time. What
package is this for?

Thanks,
Nicholas

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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi Nicholas,

On Wed, Jun 18, 2025 at 06:58:16PM -0400, Nicholas D Steeves wrote:

Andrew Bower <[email protected]> writes:

On Mon, Apr 14, 2025 at 09:07:36PM -0400, Nicholas D Steeves wrote:

Lorenzo <[email protected]> writes:

Hello Mentors,

a user reported that some NEWS entries I wrote recently are hard to
understand and suggested few improvements.
Is it allowed to edit old NEWS entries, at the benefit of users
upgrading from Bookworm to Trixie?
(unstable/testing users won't see the edited NEWS)

I'm not aware of any prohibition against this, and there's at least one
reason why your motivation to improve NEWS entries for Bookworm2Trixie
upgrades is something commendable:

Debian is for its users; NEWS interrupts upgrades; if NEWS is not
important, or if it isn't useful, then that NEWS wastes an unbounded
number of users' time. Consequently, NEWS should be important, and NEWS >> should not taste users' time.

So thank you! :) Doing this ahead of time, defensively, produces the
situation where no news is good news.

Oh, but please update (or allow your editor to update) the date stamp on >> the relevant NEWS entries. They look something like this:

-- You Name <[email protected]> Mon, 14 Apr 2025 18:06:58 $timezone

I passed on this advice to a maintainer who was consolidating two
entries where the second one superseded the first but to my surprise the new consolidated entry was presented again on package upgrade due to the timestamp even though the relevant version had been kept (at the later
of the two relevant versions).

Previously we talked about editing entries. That's a simple case. To
the best of my knowledge, this is the first time you've mentioned "consolidating two entries".

I see I have created confusion on multiple fronts... firstly I am not
the original poster, I only just joined the thread to continue the
discussion based on a different scenario where I wanted to apply the
advice from this thread.

It was Soren who advocated for adding another entry, btw. Is there
where you got the "superceded" idea? What do you mean by that, and what
is your source for how entries are supposed to "supercede" each other?

By supersede I mean that there were already 2 news entries where the *information* in the 2nd entry superseded the information in the 1st
entry. My proposal was to remove the 1st entry and reword the 2nd
entry. This is what I mean by "consolidation" - only leave the "net
effect" for the user to read.

Is this what you would expect? It doesn't seem optimal to use the
timestamp rather than the package version to decide what to present.

I expected that you would manually test your work before uploading (or
asking for sponsorship), because this kind of thing cannot be screened

I had offered a caveated suggestion to another maintainer.

for with CI. As far as I know the timestamp is for human beings. It

That's what I thought but empirically it seems that it is more than
that.

sounds like what probably happened is that you added a second NEWS entry
with a new version and assumed that the older NEWS entry would be
skipped. The logic is like this:

No, the second NEWS entry already existed and I proposed it retain its
version number so that it did not get presented again to users who
already had that version installed.

Stable has 1.0-1
Testing has 1.5-1
Stable-next will have 1.5-1

All up-to-date users in testing have been exposed to all NEWS entries
between 1.0-1 and 1.5-1, as they updated. When users do stable2testing
or when they will do an oldstable2stable upgrade (in the future), they
will get all NEWS entries between 1.0-1 and 1.5-1 as a big batch <- this
is why I readily agreed with your solution of editing the single bad
NEWS entry rather than adding a new one.

My suggestion was aimed at future oldstable2stable upgraders.

What has happened is that to reduce noise for this important
constituency, we have increased it for users who were already on testing/unstable. I think that's a fair trade but the hope and intention
was that there would be no trade-off because the latter would see
nothing.

Of course, this is all speculation and a probable waste of time. What package is this for?

This was for cron: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1107677

Perhaps this is a waste of time but if some of us end up with a better understanding of how NEWS works then there is that.

Andrew

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)