[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] news: add entry about stricter configure behavior

[James Almer]

On 12/10/2016 7:34 PM, Carl Eugen Hoyos wrote:
> 2016-12-10 23:32 GMT+01:00 Hendrik Leppkes <h.leppkes at gmail.com>:
>> On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 11:24 PM, James Almer <jamrial at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 12/10/2016 7:22 PM, Carl Eugen Hoyos wrote:
>>>> 2016-12-10 19:47 GMT+01:00 Andreas Cadhalpun <andreas.cadhalpun at googlemail.com>:
>>>>> Suggested-by: Carl Eugen Hoyos <ceffmpeg at gmail.com>
>>>>> Signed-off-by: Andreas Cadhalpun <Andreas.Cadhalpun at googlemail.com>
>>>>> ---
>>>>>  src/index | 7 +++++++
>>>>>  1 file changed, 7 insertions(+)
>>>>>
>>>>> diff --git a/src/index b/src/index
>>>>> index c203676..8f533f5 100644
>>>>> --- a/src/index
>>>>> +++ b/src/index
>>>>> @@ -37,6 +37,13 @@
>>>>>      News
>>>>>    </h1>
>>>>>
>>>>> +  <h3 id="stricterconfigure">December 10th, 2016, stricter configure behavior.</h3>
>>>>> +  <p>
>>>>> +    The configure script now fails if autodetect-libraries are requested but not found.
>>>>> +  </p>
>>>>> +  <p>
>>>>> +    If for example SDL headers are not available, '--enable-sdl2' will cause a configure failure.
>>>>
>>>> Please push, esp. since the relevant change is already in git.
>>>>
>>>> Thank you, Carl Eugen
>>>
>>> Again, I'm against this. This is not news entry worthy.
>>>
>>> A line can be added to the next release news entry announcement, or
>>> to the RELEASE_NOTES files, but not alone.
>>>
>>
>> I agree with James,
> 
>> simple behavior changes in git master should not
>> be posted as their own news entries.
> 
> Of course!
> But this is not a "simple" change but the biggest change in
> configure behaviour in the last decade.
> 
> Carl Eugen

It is still a behavior change and specific to one part of the package
that is the configure script.
We don't announce when we increase the minimum version required for
some external library, or when we "upgrade" a library to auto-detect,
and that's something that has as many chances to break existing scripts 
from distros running specific configure line option combinations as
this behavior change recently introduced.
We don't even add a line in Changelog for those in general.

If this is really that important then it can have a line in the news
entry for the upcoming release, and of course should be mentioned in
the RELEASE_NOTES file (Assuming someone actually writes one this time
instead of reusing the boilerplate one from the past several versions).