Improving the LiveCode release notes

[Peter TB Brett]

On 15/12/2015 01:00, Monte Goulding wrote:
> Hi Peter
>
> I’m not sure if you’ve seen this report of mine or if your review of the release notes includes a review of server notes or is desktop only.
>
> http://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=16350 <http://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=16350>
>
> Basically I think the above could be resolved and things simplified in general if the installation guide is a separate file. Maybe even a separate file per platform.

Yes, I want to make the installation guide separate, but I'm not sure 
that I'll be able to do that in time for LiveCode 8.

Actually, for the server, I'd rather write a "Server Deployment" guide 
to live in the IDE (and on a currently hypothetical 
automatically-updated documentation website).  The actual *installation* 
of LiveCode server is very straightforward, but integrating it into 
Apache / nginx / (insert HTTP server here) is entirely another order of 
magnitude of difficulty.

> A loong time ago I had fun with git on a rainy weekend and came up with a web app that was intended to be a github/bitbucket service hook. Here’s what it pumped out:
>
> http://ecove.on-rev.com/mergext.com/notes.html <http://ecove.on-rev.com/mergext.com/notes.html>
>
> Actually it’s markdown files that are pumped out and the above page is rentered by flatdoc http://ricostacruz.com/flatdoc/
>
> I even registered git-v.info but I never got around to deploying it after realising the server resources required could blow out quite rapidly. I’ve still got the code though it probably needs some extra work to handle the multiple notes directories and multiple development branches that the repo now has. The basic idea was that people could see exactly which version a change was made in and link to the commit and bug report and also see what is upcoming on a release branch and on the development frontier.
>
> Anyway, I’m positive you know how to get the notes out of git in the same way I did here I just thought you might be interested to see the format and how live updates to the notes via a service hook could be used to let people know what’s on the way etc.

Our release notes aren't generated from the git log, for various reasons 
-- often git commit log comments are not written with the end user of 
the software as the intended reader.  And of course rewriting the git 
log for every LiveCode 8 git commit would be perhaps too 
resource-intensive a task. ;-)

                                  Peter


-- 
Dr Peter Brett <peter.brett at livecode.com>
LiveCode Open Source Team

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