Re: Release Note Formats

[John Bartol <johnbartol -at- shaw -dot- ca>]

Take what I say with a "I've only done about 10 of these"-sized grain of 
salt.

Like so much else, it depends :-)

I've used 3 formats depending on the content of the release, user 
knowledge, and existing versions.

Item > Resolution: I've used this on releases that primarily addressed 
specific 'items' (call 'em bugs, problems, etc.) and were being 
distributed to a user base that was all running the same version of the 
system.

Changes to system: I've used a chapter based format (1 chapter per 
system section) in which I describe 'perceived' changes to the system 
where the notes were being distributed to a user base on multiple 
versions of the system (in other words, an upgrade release to version 5 
from versions 3.2, 3.3, 4.*). For many of the earlier releases, no notes 
were distributed (or poor notes were distributed).

Combination of above: I've single-sourced release notes to generate 
custom combinations of the above formats based on subsets of the 
customer base.

Overall, I'd say the split is about even between all three formats.


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