Theme repository - add changelog listing tab

[mario-siteground]

Listing the changelogs for WordPress themes on ​http://wordpress.org/themes would be helpful for people to revise theme progress while updating.

Submitted in detail as ​22810 on Core Trac

[Daedalon]

Pending on Theme Review Team to agree on the format. According to ​22810 on Core Trac this may not have yet been brought to their attention and I don't see a way to do that without subscribing to a mailing list that would notify us of discussions we're not interested in following.

[ericlewis]

Seconded - admins will browse changelogs for themes when upgrading. We should surface this information.

[jcastaneda]

We should surface this information.

Yes, very much needed and looking forward to making this happen. Though because the theme repo was recently redesigned, would this need to be modified? A link below or above the last updated section could be one way to expose it I would think.

Discussion began: ​https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2015/04/26/changelog-proposal/

First iteration: ​https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2015/04/29/a-revised-readme/

[joyously]

For reference, here are current screenshots of a theme page and a plugin page.

(Sorry that the image links are no longer available. I attached new ones.)

[SergeyBiryukov]

Related: #215, #969, #1358, #3718.

[joyously]

what the theme directory looks like

[joyously]

what the plugin directory looks like

[dingo_d]

We agreed on a triage meeting that the following things need to happen in order for people to start contributing

1. Ask somebody from meta to provide the data for twenty themes
2. Help with setting up meta environment and injecting the data from 1. into relevant databases
3. Work on issues

This way we can actually start applying patches for this.

The fix for the current issue is not problematic:

We need to store changelog data from the readme (if it exists) in the meta during the get_readme_data() run of the upload, then just see how to reuse this information on the themes page.

[joyously]

We need to store changelog data from the readme (if it exists) in the meta during the get_readme_data() run of the upload, then just see how to reuse this information on the themes page.

If we add the code to store the new data, how do we populate all the data for existing themes?
Or does it matter?

[dd32]

Replying to joyously:

We need to store changelog data from the readme (if it exists) in the meta during the get_readme_data() run of the upload, then just see how to reuse this information on the themes page.

If we add the code to store the new data, how do we populate all the data for existing themes?
Or does it matter?

I wouldn't worry about that too much - I assume someone on the dotorg side of things could trigger re-imports for the last few hundred themes, but in general importing changelogs for themes not currently being updated would provide very little benefit IMHO.

Unless someone felt comfortable doing it, I've always said "Make it work from now on, that's the safest and most straight forward option"

[oglekler]

If the theme on a website can be updated, there is a comment like:

Update Available
There is a new version of Twenty Sixteen available. View version 2.3 details or update now.

If click to the link about details in 'Appearance > Themes > Theme Details', there is theme page from wordpress.org but there is no information about what is the change in the new version.

It's hard to read Changelog (even if you found it) and not very informative sometimes, I think like in case if a commit to the repository, there suppose to be keynote about the version and also a link to get Changelog to most meticulous people. The most pressures point in case of themes - any changes which can affect appearance, sometimes API has changes and it causes problems with a child theme, these things need to be mentioned upfront.

[oglekler]

Example of how Changelog information can fit on the theme's page

[poena]

Where are we on step two above?
Help with setting up meta environment and injecting the data from 1. into relevant databases
It is still very difficult to contribute to the meta environment.

[galbaras]

Seems to me that themes should be consistent with plugins in every way, both in the WordPress admin and in a parallel repository of their own, including reviews/ratings, support forums, tags, etc (not sure why this was ever handled differently and only continues to diverge).