D 2.062 release

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Sun, 17 Feb 2013 21:44:18 -0500, Walter Bright  
<newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote:

> On 2/17/2013 6:11 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> Let me give you some examples of "new features"
>>
>> std.array.replace compile error (string and immutable string)
>> There's no Duration.max
>> Document extern properly
>> etc.
>
> Compare the earlier changelogs with the bugzilla entries.
>
> It's EXACTLY THE SAME TEXT.
>
> EXACTLY.

No.  We have quite a few messages that were not "bug reports" in prior  
releases.  These messages have no corresponding bugzilla entry.  These  
were truly useful descriptions.  The bug reports were few, and yes, there  
were a few instances like the ones I gave (I saw "relax inout rules" which  
is terrible as a description).

for example:

* std.​array.​insert has been deprecated. Please use  
std.​array.​insertInPlace instead.
* Major overhaul of std.​regex module's implementation. Breaking change in  
std.​regex.​replace with delegate, use Captures!string instead of  
RegexMatch!string as delegate parameter.

The latest versions have almost none of those useful descriptions.  They  
are almost exclusively of the cryptic  
you-have-to-click-on-me-to-understand-what-I-mean type.

Even if there are past examples of poor descriptions for the changelog,  
that is not not an excuse to make them all bugzilla reports.

A good first step would be to examine the bugzilla reports that will be  
listed as "new features" (should be easy since it's a report that's  
already being used by the web site), and change the descriptions to real  
useful enhancement descriptions before the release.  But I think the  
release needs a hard copy of these descriptions.

> I understand many people do not like the change to the changelog - but I  
> ask for a reason that make sense. I keep hearing that the text is  
> different, but that is simply not so. It's the same exact information.  
> Even the categories are the same.

I did a search for the above two examples in bugzilla, and I found  
nothing.  Clearly, this is not the exact same information.

>
> Also, anyone can go in and change the bugzilla issue titles to make them  
> more readable.

That actually is not a good thing...  Anyone can maliciously affect the  
changlog, or alter the changelog at some later point because they wanted  
to 'reopen' a bug.

-Steve