Re: Generate NEWS.XX.Y.html file for Emacs website

[Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> I see that you changed admin.el on master, which means Emacs 28.x will
> be unable to use this?

I pushed it to emacs-28 (as this is only in admin/admin.el and doesn't
touch anything else).  So we can use it on Emacs 28.2, and that's what I
did to generate the HTML file I posted.

> In any case, if we want the above to be part of updating the Emacs Web
> site and the on-line manuals, those commands will need to be part of
> the scripts that are used for those jobs, or maybe a separate script.

Indeed.  I will work on it, as well as updating the relevant docs.

>> > Also, how will this HTML version be maintained, after it is produced.
>>
>> The easiest option is to just leave the old generated HTML files alone
>> and update them only if absolutely necessary.
>
> I meant to ask how will we keep them under VCS (CVS in this case).

I might be missing some context here, because I don't think I understand
what you're asking.  Do we need to do anything else besides copying them
in place (to "news/NEWS.NN.Y.html") and running "cvs update"?

>> But it'd be better if we could generate HTML versions of all etc/NEWS.*
>> files whenever we make a new release.
>
> Each time we make a new release, or just once?

We could decide which way we want to go with it.  I imagine that the
template could change over time, so it might be nice to do it every time
we make a release (but we'd need to automate it).

On the other hand, it might save us some work if we only do it once.

>> I didn't yet look into this, so I don't know how realistic this is,
>> but I have a hunch that it's doable.  Maybe we will only be able to
>> do it for releases newer than Emacs 21 (or something) though.
>
> Do we have links for those older NEWS files on the Web site?  If not,
> I see no point in generating NEWS in HTML format for old releases.

The only benefit I see is that you could then edit the URL to visit the
pages for older releases.  I think Karl Fogel pointed out this use case,
and it's definitely something I have done in the past too.

But I'm not sure it's very important.  We could perhaps do it if it
turns out to be only a very small amount of work.