Re: Alpha & beta announcements shouldn't go to info-gnu by default

[Jim Meyering]

Reuben Thomas wrote:
> Karl just pointed out to me that, as per:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Announcements.html
>
> non-stable release announcements should only go to info-gnu in
> exceptional circumstances. Therefore, the hardwired To: address in
> maint.mk is wrong, and should be set differently for alpha, beta &
> stable targets.

FWIW, the "?=" means it's merely a default address.
But it is better to have a default that is suitable
also when RELEASE_TYPE is not "stable", so...

> I had a look through maint.mk, and it seems that the right way to
> implement this is to pass RELEASE_TYPE down to the announcement
> target, and then have To: default to info-gnu for stable releases, and
> $(PACKAGE_BUGREPORT) otherwise, which in turn means that
> announcement_Cc_ needs to add $(PACKAGE_BUGREPORT) only for stable
> releases. Hence, the conditional assignments of announcement_Cc_ and
> announcement_mail_headers_ need to be moved into the announcement
> target, which seems harmless as those variables are not used elsewhere
> in maint.mk.
>
> In other words, I'm happy to provide a patch once the management has
> approved the lines along which I'm writing it!

Thanks for the suggestion and the offer.
Actually it was easy to do that using only a GNU Make conditional,
so I wrote the patch below and tested it like this:

  $ make announcement RELEASE_TYPE=stable rel-files= VERSION=8.12 > k
  $ make announcement RELEASE_TYPE=beta   rel-files= VERSION=8.12 > k2
  $ diff -u k k2
  --- k   2011-05-06 08:22:53.768598201 +0200
  +++ k2  2011-05-06 08:23:22.101339813 +0200
  @@ -1,18 +1,17 @@

  -To: address@hidden
  +To: address@hidden
   Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden
  -Mail-Followup-To: address@hidden
  -Subject: coreutils-8.12 released [stable]
  +Subject: coreutils-8.12 released [beta]

   <#secure method=pgpmime mode=sign>

   FIXME: put comments here

   Here are the compressed sources:
  -  http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/coreutils/coreutils-8.12.tar.xz   (4.7MB)
  +  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-8.12.tar.xz   (4.7MB)

   Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  -  http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/coreutils/coreutils-8.12.tar.xz.sig
  +  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-8.12.tar.xz.sig

   To reduce load on the main server, use a mirror listed at:
     http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html
  [Exit 1]

>From d801cb77b966678e21af7a106b15a3fe598d5ec4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jim Meyering <address@hidden>
Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 08:09:21 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] maint.mk: use info-gnu@ as the default only for a stable
 release

* top/maint.mk: Don't default to info-gnu for alpha or beta releases.
For those, just use $(PACKAGE_BUGREPORT), in which case we don't have
to set the Mail-Followup-To header.  Prompted by Reuben Thomas in
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.gnulib.bugs/26488
---
 ChangeLog    |    8 ++++++++
 top/maint.mk |   19 ++++++++++++++-----
 2 files changed, 22 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index b57e17b..e314196 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,11 @@
+2011-05-06  Jim Meyering  <address@hidden>
+
+       maint.mk: use info-gnu@ as the default only for a stable release
+       * top/maint.mk: Don't default to info-gnu for alpha or beta releases.
+       For those, just use $(PACKAGE_BUGREPORT), in which case we don't have
+       to set the Mail-Followup-To header.  Prompted by Reuben Thomas in
+       http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.gnulib.bugs/26488
+
 2011-05-05  Paul Eggert  <address@hidden>

        assert-h: new module, which supports C1X-style static_assert
diff --git a/top/maint.mk b/top/maint.mk
index 8727b3f..07efcec 100644
--- a/top/maint.mk
+++ b/top/maint.mk
@@ -1123,11 +1123,20 @@ gpg_key_ID ?= \
          | sed -n '/.*key ID \([0-9A-F]*\)/s//\1/p'; rm -f .ann-sig)

 translation_project_ ?= address@hidden
-announcement_Cc_ ?= $(translation_project_), $(PACKAGE_BUGREPORT)
-announcement_mail_headers_ ?=                                          \
-To: address@hidden                                                     \
-Cc: $(announcement_Cc_)                                                        
\
-Mail-Followup-To: $(PACKAGE_BUGREPORT)
+
+# Make info-gnu the default only for a stable release.
+ifeq ($(RELEASE_TYPE),stable)
+  announcement_Cc_ ?= $(translation_project_), $(PACKAGE_BUGREPORT)
+  announcement_mail_headers_ ?=                                                
\
+    To: address@hidden                                         \
+    Cc: $(announcement_Cc_)                                            \
+    Mail-Followup-To: $(PACKAGE_BUGREPORT)
+else
+  announcement_Cc_ ?= $(translation_project_)
+  announcement_mail_headers_ ?=                                                
\
+    To: $(PACKAGE_BUGREPORT)                                           \
+    Cc: $(announcement_Cc_)
+endif

 announcement: NEWS ChangeLog $(rel-files)
        @$(build_aux)/announce-gen                                      \
--
1.7.5.320.g20a15