Subject: Re: bug#49855: Problem with GNU ELPA build of :core package (Re: [GNU ELPA] So-Long version 1.1)

From: Phil Sainty <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2021 00:31:20 +1200

On 2021-08-04 20:10, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> I don't really think there's any way to determine the intention here.
> The developer may be working in a branch, fix something, bump the
> number, fix some more (but doesn't want that to land in ELPA yet), and
> then merge, for instance.

I guess so.  It seems a less-likely workflow to my mind, but that may
just be my own habits and biases talking.

Still, it would be good if we could at least reduce the chances of 
people
getting tripped up by this.  Taking a different tack, perhaps we just 
need
a more detailed (or an additional) notification email.

At present I'm sent this:

> Subject: [GNU ELPA] So-Long version 1.1.1
> From: ELPA update <[email-masked]>
> To: [email-masked]
> Cc: Phil Sainty <[email-masked]>
> Reply-To: [email-masked]
> 
> Version 1.1.1 of package So-Long has just been released in GNU ELPA.
> You can now find it in M-x package-list RET.
> 
> So-Long describes itself as:
>   Say farewell to performance problems with minified code.
> 
> More at https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/so-long.html

If in addition to that information, it also showed the commit hash and
message which was used to build the release, I would have immediately
seen that I'd messed up.  Something like:

> Build details:
> Commit 359a8e4eda047b7dcb7e64faff7f8eaacf5d937c
> ; * lisp/so-long.el: Bump to version 1.1

I'm not sure whether it's appropriate to include such details in that
particular notification, or if it would be better to send a separate
message to the maintainer; but either way these details would provide
direct confirmation as to whether the thing you thought had happened
had actually happened.

As it was, I thought I'd released "version 1.1", and the notification
told me that I'd done exactly that, and so I was completely confident
that everything was correct until I found that it wasn't.  I suspect
that if I hadn't done a sanity-check then I might not realised anything
was wrong until someone else told me.

-Phil