Project: Release Notes V2

[MarshallOfSound]

One of the big issues folks have with upgrading Electron is being able to easily tell (a) what has changed between the version they're on and the version they're upgrading to and (b) whether those changes impact them.

Currently the solution to (a) is to check the releases notes of every version between vCurrent and vNext. This works reasonably well for upgrades within the same major version of Electron but falls apart when crossing the major version boundary. This is because fixes / features in vN might not be in vN+1 and vice versa due to how we maintain branches in parallel and backport changes.

In order to solve this problem in a way that actually solves the underlying issue for electron app developers I'd like to outline a series of changes to how we handle release notes.

• Release notes should not be included in GitHub releases, the notes are inaccurate best and completely wrong at worst.
• The release notes generation code should be pulled out of electron/electron and moved to clerk such that you can fire an API request and obtain release notes between two versions.
• GitHub Releases should contain links to a new release notes service on https://releases.electronjs.org powered by the Clerk release notes service

The new release notes service in clerk is specced out here: electron/clerk#66

[nornagon]

fixes / features in vN might not be in vN+1

This seems like a failure of our backporting policy IMO. Upgrading should never remove features (unless those features were intentionally removed & the removal was listed in breaking changes, etc.)

[MarshallOfSound]

This seems like a failure of our backporting policy IMO. Upgrading should never remove features (unless those features were intentionally removed & the removal was listed in breaking changes, etc.)

Not necessarily, our version system is non-linear, such that 13.3.0 might contain fixes not in 14.0.1 literally because it was released after it. I.e. the change might be in 14.2.0 🤷 It isn't a failure in backport policy, it's just an unchangeable That's How Time Works problem 😄

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale. If this issue is still affecting you, please leave any comment (for example, "bump"), and we'll keep it open. If you have any new additional information—in particular, if this is still reproducible in the latest version of Electron or in the beta—please include it with your comment!

[github-actions]

This issue has been closed due to inactivity, and will not be monitored. If this is a bug and you can reproduce this issue on a supported version of Electron please open a new issue and include instructions for reproducing the issue.