Re: announce-gen -- not flexible enough

[Jim Meyering]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:

>    Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>    > announce-gen is lovley, but it is very inflexible if you use a
>    > different format for NEWS.
>    >
>    > In inetutils, we use something like:
>    >
>    > | December 27, 2008
>    > | Version 1.6:
>    > |
>    > | * Fixed FOO in BAR.
>    > |
>    > | * Added BAZ.
>    > | 
>    > | October 21, 2006
>    > | Version 1.5:
>    > |
>    > | ...
>    >
>    >
>    > I am not sure what a way one should fix announce-gen to be more
>    > flexible, maybe just being able to specify a `start' regexp, and a
>    > `end' regexp would be enough.  So in the above example, we could use
>    > something like:
>    >
>    >  --start-regexp="^Version " --end-regexp="^$"
>    >
>    > Or maybe just a switch to skip looking at NEWS, and add a `FIXME: Add
>    > noteworthy changes here' where the news entries go.
>    >
>    > Alas, I don't know enough perl to hack announce-gen.
...
> Changing the format is just cumbersome and not really
> worthwhile; asking each and every project to follow this strict format
> is unrealistic as well.  Inserting things manually is impossible,
> since `make alpha/stable' will fail hard since there is no way to
> ignore those checks.  For the later, you must change
> announce-gen/do-release-commit-and-tag anyway.
>
> I do not see what exactly you are suggesting that I didn't already
> suggest, I was looking for input on the `right way' of doing things.

You said you would not be changing announce-gen, so isn't it moot?

I pointed out that yet another script parses (and rewrites) NEWS
and would need similar changes.

I'm not going to work on that right now, so presented
a few options.