proposal for branch patches after first release

[Joel Brobecker <brobecker at adacore dot com>]

Hello,

I would like to propose a change in our procedures when a patch gets
checked in a release branch.  This would only concern changes that
are made after the first release off that branch is made.

For instance, once we've made the GDB 7.6 release, any new patch on
the gdb_7_6-branch would be affected by this proposal.

The problem is the following:
  - The time it took to assemble the GDB 7.5.1 tarballs, and put
    them on both sourceware.org and gnu.org was under 30mins.
  - The amount of time it takes me to write the associated announcement
    was over 2 hours.

The reason for taking this amount of time is that I'd like to tell
everyone what it is exactly that 7.5.1 fixes over 7.5. For the first
major release (Eg 7.5), I can use the NEWS file, which provides
enough information. But for the 7.5.1, I have nothing other than
the revision log. So I went through every single commit, and tried
to write a small description for each commit (I skipped testsuite
changes to save time).

The proposal:

    Once a release has been published off a branch, any patch merged
    on the release branch requires a corresponding update in the
    NEWS file.

I think that it makes sense regardless of the problem that affects me
because, if someone feels strongly enough that the problem should
be fixed in a subsequent corrective release, I think it deserves
a NEWS entry. Also, it will allow users to refer to the NEWS files
to determine what exactly the corrective release fixes. And it will
save me tons of time because I can now write the annoucement using
the information there.

Technically, I think we'll want the NEWS update to be checked in
both HEAD + branch.  But I don't think we can add the entries in
the HEAD branch right away, because we don't know ahead of time
whether a corrective release will be made or not.  So what I propose
is the following: The NEWS entry should be checked in the branch.
And the Release Manager (me) will add those entries to the HEAD
when publishing the new release.

OK?

-- 
Joel