[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #31074: Twenty* themes should have an official change log

[WordPress Trac]

#31074: Twenty* themes should have an official change log
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 Reporter:  jgehrcke     |      Owner:
     Type:  enhancement  |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal       |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Themes       |    Version:
 Severity:  normal       |   Keywords:
  Focuses:               |
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 Currently, the TwentyXXX theme updates do not provide proper release
 notes. In particular, updates are offered via the dashboard, without a
 simple method to see what actually changed. The lack of semantic
 versioning or a guarantee for not breaking backwards compatibility
 complicates the situation.

 I think that most of us agree that there is plenty reason why proper
 release notes / a change log are helpful and sometimes required and
 hopefully you agree that this is not the place to list all of these
 arguments. Proper release notes are state-of-the-art in any serious open
 source software project, and the WordPress core is no exception, which is
 great. However, the TwentyXXX theme releases seem to be a little neglected
 in this regard.

 Although I ranted about this topic elsewhere [1] and Samuel Wood clarified
 in the forums [2] that this is something that is being worked on, I think
 that it is good to have a central place (this ticket) to refer to, at
 least for the community, but hopefully also for internal use.

 I want to add that others discussed this topic in the forums, too [3], and
 these are all valid quotes, in my opinion:

 "Updating from 1.1 has caused some minor, but unexpected presentation
 changes on one of my child themes, and I'd like to know what else has
 changed and what to test for"

 "I really expected something more accessible documenting revisions to a
 theme that has had over 200,000 downloads."

 "what was the point upgrading this one? -- Good question. Without the
 release notes it is difficult to say what you might be missing out on."


 References:

 [1] http://gehrcke.de/2015/01/official-wordpress-themes-should-have-an-
 official-changelog/

 [2] https://wordpress.org/support/topic/opinions-please-official-
 wordpress-themes-should-have-an-official-change-log-1

 [3] https://wordpress.org/support/topic/twenty-twelve-12-release-notes

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/31074>
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