Rely on JIRA for release notes ?

[Rod Widdowson]

FWIW I think that the only value of doing release notes for an Alpha is to
allow us to alpha test the process, which of course is why we are here.

I'd also agree with Scott that unless someone starts paying us to document &
support APIs we can let documentation & release notes languish.  I think
that we owe it to ourselves to have decent javadoc and it is a courtesy to
obey whatever our rules are about version control.  I'd remark that some
users of these APIs go on to produce non- or sub-compliant SAML
implementations which then cost us support time over in -users; none of them
(as far as I am aware) provide financial assistance and only a few
provide[d] technical assistance during this project (The ones who have: you
know who you are and so do we, and we thank you...)

So it is user visible changes, primarily bug fixes and new features, which I
care about and I believe we need to document.   Both will have a JIRA case:
bugs because they are bugs and new function because of tempo .  We might
want to track user visibility in the IdP Project with a parallel case (that
way the person shipping the product trawl through all the repositories.

What I have done on other projects is write the release note when the case
is resolved and do not close the case until the release note is written (and
the regressions run, but that’s not relevant here);  FogBugZ makes that
easy, but this is just discipline.  The person writing the release notes
moves the cases to closed and if there are no release notes reopens the case
and assigns it back to the person who resolved it. A case which is closed
gets no release note (although it's easy to accidently close a case and so
it might be worthwhile to just check them).

For new function the release notes should point to the documentation.  If
the documentation has not been written the new function does not exist.

All of which is pretty much what Scott said:
> Well, treating the whole API set as a unit, it doesn't really matter until
> we release the IdP. That's why I'm not treating it very precisely right
> now.

This is just my inclination, I do not feel strongly about this and I'll be
interested to hear Brent....

/Rod