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Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Quick questions on our change log

Q1: How often do you check the "Resolved Issues", "Known Issues", "Breaking Changes" pages in our What's New documentation? For instance: "never, did not know about this page"; "every minor"; "every major"; "rarely, only when I encounter an issue"; "once 1-2 year when we upgrade"; your option.
Q2: What would you like to improve about these pages to make your work more comfortable?
Q3: Are you missing anything important from the "New Major Features" section like this for v18.1?



This post idea came after looking at the fixed XAF issues for the upcoming v17.2.8:

As you can see, titles have different formatting and it is not easy to find all issues for a certain platform or module, e.g. Mobile.

This is how a bit better formatted list looks now:

This needs a little bit more discipline from our team, but may be more helpful for our customers. I am  still hesitating because this problem may not exist for many, because Google Analytics reports low visits for these pages.

I hope you can help us see whether to focus on more important things by answering my questions above. Your other thoughts and suggestions are welcome too, as always.

See Also: General Information > Installation > Upgrade Notes

9 comments:

  1. I'm reading the release notes ALWAYS very carefully to
    1) understand if an update could solve problems relevant for me
    2) get an idea what's going on that could enlighten my customers
    3) learn what possibly could go wrong after an update (unfortunately sometimes the breaking changes are not the whole story - which on the other side is difficult in such a complex product)

    I found the feature to be able to enter my current dx version and the target version to be a very cool addition.

    Your mentioned change to format titles differently would add to readability, too. Of course this involves some hard thinking upfront (which terms make the most sense) and initially high discipline in the team but once applied I think it becomes common sense. I'm doing something similar with my commit comments.

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  2. +1 for Andreas! Couldnt agree more. Nothing to add from my Side.

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  3. I usually skim through the change log on every release as it's downloading. If there's a particular issue I'm looking for, I'll make sure it's in there. As for the label change, it certainly looks more clean. If there's a way that we can tag the platform an issue resides in as we create support tickets, maybe that could help lessen the burden on your team. Either way, I find these sections useful.

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  4. i think real programers must check this pages before than update

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  5. I definitely review the breaking changes and fixes with every update. Anything you can do to better categorize the XAF modules will certainly help.

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  6. Late but anyway:
    Change log is also very important for me. I take a look at it at least before every upgrade but often on minor update notifications (if an upgrade isn't even intended). Andreas summed it up very nicely.

    I was badly missing something slightly similar for Xpand and I am really glad that it got a "Whats New" page some month ago.
    Regards, Johannes

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