Making WordPress.org

Opened 6 years ago

Closed 6 years ago

#3499 closed enhancement (wontfix)

Plugin Directory: Include link to changelog.txt if exists

Reported by: ipstenu's profile Ipstenu Owned by:
Milestone: Priority: normal
Component: Plugin Directory Keywords:
Cc:

Description

Given that readme files over 10k act weird (they're too large), we've been recommending people move their old Changelog updates to a changelog.txt file

This helps a lot, but it also makes the changelog LESS discoverable for people who care.

If possible, having a link to the changelog.txt file off the developers tab would restore this usefulness.

Change History (7)

#1 @joyously
6 years ago

Would this affect what is shown in the admin when clicking on View Details for a plugin update? That's where it's so useful to see the changelog, to know if the plugin should be updated for that site or not.

#2 @Ipstenu
6 years ago

No. This is not related.

Or it shouldn't be. The changelog.txt should be for the OLD changelog data (like if you're on version 3.0, you can move 2.0 and older to the other file).

#3 @dd32
6 years ago

Given that readme files over 10k act weird (they're too large)

This was a limit of bbPress 1 - the serialised readme content would overflow the field it was stored within.

#4 @Ipstenu
6 years ago

Things still don't show properly if they get too long per @otto42

#5 @dd32
6 years ago

FWIW Here's two of the largest plugin readme changelog's:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce-jetpack/#developers
https://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-digital-downloads/#developers

They're both 200K+ changelogs that display perfectly ok. There's >4,000 plugins with readme's over 10K, 200 over ~50KB, 15 over 200K.
Adding support for this and encouraging plugin authors to put extra effort into yet another thing doesn't seem worth anyones time, especially when it doesn't cause issues.

If we want to encourage changelogs to be cleaned up, I'd rather just suggest plugin authors delete changelogs for any releases done over a year ago, it's not like it's going to stay relevant.

#6 follow-up: @Otto42
6 years ago

I would not define having a 382k HTML for the plugins page to be "proper" in any way at all.

For speed considerations alone, I still would recommend reducing the readme.txt. And I'm fine with recommending people ditch old changelogs entirely, because most users don't care.

#7 in reply to: ↑ 6 @obenland
6 years ago

  • Resolution set to wontfix
  • Status changed from new to closed

I'd rather just suggest plugin authors delete changelogs for any releases done over a year ago, it's not like it's going to stay relevant.

Replying to Otto42:

I'm fine with recommending people ditch old changelogs entirely, because most users don't care.

Let's go with that then.

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