If a serial with the status Expected has notes and you click the "Generate next" button, the serial status will change to Late and the notes will be gone. If the system preference PreserveSerialNotes is activated, it won't have any effect, as the new serial won't keep the notes from the previous serial. This is cause by the call to the function ModSerialStatus at serials-collection.pl inside operation cud-gennext, that passes "" where the notes should go. This means that field will be deleted in the current serial with status 1 (Expected) and won't be copied to the new serial.
Created attachment 174917 [details] [review] Bug 38515: Keep serial notes when generating next serial. This patch prevents the loss of notes in serials when generating next serial Test plan: 1 Create a subscription, fill the notes field for the serial with Expected status and activate the system preference PreserveSerialNotes 2 Click Generate next 3 Check that the notes from the now Late serial are gone and that the new serial doesn't have notes. 4 Apply patch, restart services 5 Edit the serial with Expected status to fill the notes field. 6 Click Generate next 7 Check that the notes from the now Late serial are kepts and that they have been copied to the new serial.