[wp-meta] [Making WordPress.org] #5786: add a link to the release announcement posts for each version on https://wordpress.org/download/releases/

[Making WordPress.org]

#5786: add a link to the release announcement posts for each version on
https://wordpress.org/download/releases/
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 Reporter:  pbiron         |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  enhancement    |      Status:  closed
 Priority:  normal         |   Milestone:
Component:  Developer Hub  |  Resolution:  maybelater
 Keywords:                 |
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Changes (by coffee2code):

 * status:  new => closed
 * resolution:   => maybelater


Comment:

 While I agree this would be a nice-to-have, I don't think it's worth the
 effort (not just the implementation effort, but the fact that it would be
 another thing that needs updating after every release).

 The source for the display of the page itself is the
 [https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/browser/sites/trunk/wordpress.org/public_html
 /wp-content/themes/pub/wporg-main/page-download-releases.php page-
 download-releases.php] template of the wporg-main theme.

 Information about the releases is retrieved via a call to
 `get_breakdown()` or `get_releases_breakdown()`, both of which aren't
 open-sourced. But the info about the releases that is returned is fully
 autogenerated from a directory listing of all packaged releases.

 At minimum, the blog post URL would have to be correlated to a release
 number and set somewhere so that the template could add the link. This
 adds an extra step to the release checklist. And if we want to be
 thorough, that would also mean after every minor release, beta, and RC.

 At present, the release posts are actually linked via the
 [https://wordpress.org/about/history/ History] page, which is itself
 already linked from the [https://wordpress.org/download/releases/
 Releases] page. Obviously that's not complete since it only links the
 major releases and not minor releases, betas, or RCs.

 To be implemented, we'd need the following to happen, at minimum:

 * Obtain some sort of consensus that the effort is worthwhile since
 someone from the core team, likely in conjunction with the meta team,
 would have to update the release number -> blog post URL association after
 each release (for major, minor, beta, and RC assuming a post is made). The
 task in general isn't imperative, but if we're going to do it then it
 should be done in a fairly timely fashion. The task would need to be added
 to the release checklist(s).
 * Implement a means to correlate release version numbers with their
 associated blog URLs somewhere. This could be hardcoded in an array in a
 template file, set within an array in a constant, set as a setting on the
 main w.org site, or even returned via an API.
 * Correlate all previous releases with their associated blog posts.
 (There's a lot of them.)
 * Update the page-download-releases.php template to retrieve the list of
 URLs and add them in the appropriate places (likely linking the version
 numbers in the tables as proposed).

 If someone wants to champion and shephard this, we can consider it more.

 Worth considering is that if the release posts URLs are correlated and
 available in a more general fashion than just for this purpose, we could
 make use of it elsewhere as the de facto URLs for references to WP
 releases.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/5786#comment:1>
Making WordPress.org <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/>
Making WordPress.org