If you write a beat regularly, or if you have chosen a beat with a lot of packages, the checkBeat app might help. I've been doing this for a while, and recently made a simple change that might make it helpful for others. (Previously you had to edit the C for each release). First time you do this there are a bunch of steps, but then it gets easier. 1) $ yum install sqlite-devel 2) Make a directory to work in. If you're a regular beat writer, you may want to keep this around. 3) go to http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=docs/tools.git;a=tree;f=tools/checkBeat and download checkBeatMW.c and Makefile into your directory. If your beat has a bazillion packages, you might also want to look at makeBeats.sh. You could clone the docs/tools repo, but all you really need from there are these two files. 4) $ make checkBeatMW 5) Create 2 subdirectories, new and old 6) go to http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=docs/technical-notes.git;a=tree;f=build and grab the primary.sqlite corresponding to the previous and next release. That location has a directory for each release, and a subdirectory for alpha, beta, release. Alternatively, the README has instructions for getting the latest in case I haven't pushed it yet. Place these in the new and old subdirectories. 7) Make a file containing the list of packages in your beat. The makeBeats.sh script will make such a file, but it is based on the RPM groups, which are wrong more often than not, and needs to be edited for each release. Figuring out how to edit it requires poking around in the SQLite database. yum groupinfo <groupname> could give you a reasonable start if your beat maps to a group. 8) $ ./checkBeatMW my.beat >myBeat.mw 9) myBeat.mw will now contain a list of any packages in your beat which have changed, with the previous and next versions and a link to the upstream site. The list is marked up for MediaWiki. You can paste this into your beat and use it as a placeholder for apps you need to research. The Development Tools beat has an example, which, of course, will disappear as I research those packages. Circuit Design, Embedded and Amateur Radio also contain examples but I should complete those in the next day or two. On subsequent releases you just need to grab the new primary.sqlite and run checkBeat again. Keep in mind that in many cases the changes will be minor tweaks or bugfixes which don't really need to be captured in the release notes. --McD -- docs mailing list docs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/docs
