fedora-magazine-newsroom

#181 Use rpmautospec and its new %autorelease and %autochangelog macros!
Closed: scheduled by rlengland. Opened by glb.

Closed: scheduled
Reopen Issue

Article Summary:

As part of https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Rpmautospec_by_Default, I’d like to write an article that gives a short intro to what rpmautospec means for packagers and users.

The article would be directed at:

  • less-active maintainers who probably heard about rpmautospec, but have lingering doubts,
  • users who might wonder how it impacts them,
  • (very importantly) contributors from other rpm-based distros that don’t use rpmautospec, but could.

Article Description:

Outline:

  • what is the purpose of Release and %changelog fields in rpms
  • how %autorelease and %autochangelog work
  • how do the “new” changelogs differ from “old” changelogs (i.e. not much)
  • what this means for packagers (less busywork and merge conflicts), for contributors to packaging (better pull-request workflow), and for users (no change).
  • example of a simple version upgrade and how the generated fields look
  • links to the Change page and other docs

The publishing of the article would be conditional on the changes to the packaging guidelines being merged, currently under review.

Metadata Update from @glb:
- Issue assigned to zbyszek
- Issue tagged with: article, needs-image

The draft is ready for review.

When I click Preview, and do the preview inline (in an popup), it looks like I want it. But in the preview opened in a separate tab, it looks like shite, with all inline fixed-font snippets split out to separate paragraphs. I'm not sure if I'm doing some thing wrong or if the preview is busted, so I left it like that.

Metadata Update from @zbyszek:
- Custom field editor adjusted to https://fedoramagazine.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=38069&action=edit
- Custom field preview-link adjusted to https://fedoramagazine.org/?p=38069&preview=true&preview_id=38069

The theme isn't designed for inline monospace fonts. The documentation recommends using italics instead: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-magazine/writing-guidelines/#_markup

I can fix it as part of and editing pass.

Thanks for the contribution.

I can fix it as part of and editing pass.

Please do. I changed some of the markup, but I'm not sure if that's the appropriate way. The italic font is not very readable.

Also bold in code blocks is not rendered properly.

I just made a quick pass to tweak the styling. I used the recommended italic style for package, file, and command names. However, I used inline monospace when you were citing text from one of the code blocks.

Thanks! I noticed some "Release"s and "%changelog"s that were missing markup, and changed a few words.

I would welcome some comments on the "big picture": e.g. is the text clear enough?

Oh, I wonder if we should obscure the e-mail address. Something like <martin@…> would also be narrower and the layout would work better on a narrow screen.

I would welcome some comments on the "big picture": e.g. is the text clear enough?

I think the logical flow of the article (history → what's new → implications) is very good. What you are trying to convey seems very clear to me.

I have some quibbles about some of the phrasing. And I haven't done a careful read of the article for typos yet (but I did notice some like "... must be provided the packager" that I haven't corrected yet.

One quibble I have is the phrase "recommended default". A recommendation is something you are asking a user to choose. A default is a setting you have already chosen for the user. (Or more literally, "if the user fails (faults) in making a choice"). The phrase "recommended default" is somewhat contradictory and I don't think you mean to say you have changed any defaults in the rpm tooling.

I wonder if we should obscure the e-mail address.

I don't think that is necessary in this case because those git logs are known to be public and easily harvestable anyway. But that might be a good question for @bcotton. I think he wanted to review the article to see if it should really be a Fedora Magazine article anyway.
Edited by glb

One quibble I have is the phrase "recommended default"

Indeed. I also noticed that the phrase "recommended default in F38" was repeated three times. I reworded the first one, removed the second one, and changed "recommended default" to "recommended approach" in the third.

Here is an idea for a cover image. I'm thinking gears work to convey the automation theme.

differential.jpg

@zbyszek : Did you see Ben's comments?: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/article-proposal-rpmautospec/79813/7

Otherwise, if you think this is ready to go, I think we can run it.

Thanks!

Metadata Update from @rlengland:
- Custom field editor adjusted to glb (was: https://fedoramagazine.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=38069&action=edit)
- Custom field image-editor adjusted to @glb

Metadata Update from @glb:
- Custom field image-editor adjusted to glb (was: @glb)
- Custom field publish adjusted to 2023-04-14

Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)
Issue close_status updated to: scheduled

@glb, thank you for the cover image and publishing this.

Metadata

article needs-image

None
None
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2023-04-14
glb
glb
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