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> They're not mutually exclusive. You can publish both release notes and a release announcement. Where, though? Consider the App Store, for example. You can ha
by lapcat 1y ago
> They're not mutually exclusive. You can publish both release notes and a release announcement.
Where, though? Consider the App Store, for example. You can have releases notes or a release announcement in the App Store along with a new version of your app, but not both.
The way you present it, with "good" vs. "bad", suggests that you're arguing for one, not for both, for release announcements instead of release notes.
> I'm guessing you mean "sell" as in "manipulate" but I see it as "get users excited."
But users don't need to get excited by every software update. That sounds like your need to get users excited about updates.
> When vendors just publish a terse changelog, it feels like they don't care much about me
That depends on what you mean by terse. "Bug fixes and performance improvements" is terse and careless. A comprehensive list of changes is not necessarily terse. And in a sense, "release announcements include only the most impactful changes" is terse too.
- mtlynch 1y ago> The way you present it, with "good" vs. "bad", suggests that you're arguing for one, not for both, for release announcements instead of release notes. I don't think release notes are bad, but I think adopting a release notes style for a release announcement is bad. Similarly, I think adopting a commit message style in release notes is bad. I'll look for ways to clarify this in the article. >> When vendors just publish a terse changelog, it feels like they don't care much about me >That depends on what you mean by terse. "Bug fixes and performance improvements" is terse and careless. A comprehensive list of changes is not necessarily terse. And in a sense, "release announcements include only the most impactful changes" is terse too. When I say "terse" I mean that they describe each individual change tersely. KeePass is an example of a vendor I think publishes release announcements with terse change rundowns, and I think the announcements suffer because of it.[0, 1] When minor changes get the same screen real estate as big new features, it's hard for the reader to recognize the important features because the signal to noise is too high. Out of curiosity, what's your opinion of KeePass release announcements? [0] https://keepass.info/news/n250304_2.58.html https://keepass.info/news/n250304_2.58.html [1] https://keepass.info/news/n240601_2.57.html https://keepass.info/news/n240601_2.57.html
- lapcat 1y agoKeePass is a free open source project.
- mtlynch 1y ago>KeePass is a free open source project. Can you state your point more explicitly? That fact seems unrelated to my question.
- lapcat 1y agoMy point is that I would give them a break. And if the purpose of your blog post were to lecture free open projects, that would make it even worse, indeed repulsive, frankly.