It seems like not a single week passes without a new NPM supply chain attack, so I find it more important than ever to read the release notes of every single direct dependency my projects have before upgrading them. It’s something I’ve always done to an extent for minor releases, and certainly for major releases, but these days I’ll even have a look at every patch release, just to make sure it’s legitimate.
This is tiring, especially at the rate at which most dependencies update these days. I could just not keep updating my projects, especially the finished ones, they are simple static websites after all. But in my experience, the longer packages aren’t updated, the harder it becomes to do so when it eventually becomes necessary to fix a bug or add a new feature to the project.
Thinking about this made me realise something else. I used to manually do updates on my phone so I could check the release notes and changelogs of the installed apps (and the OS) to learn what was new. I loved seeing what was added or changed after a software update.
Because of that, in my own apps, I took it one step further and perhaps went a bit overboard. After each update, I forcibly showed a changelog after the app reloaded, so people would know they were running the newest version and what had changed. I’m dialling this back again, because it could be quite disruptive—but I am still proud of every release I cut and want to give users the chance to learn about them in an obvious place.
These days, however, it seems I am in a minority in that. Most companies don’t seem to bother writing changelogs any more. It’s all just “Thank you for using our app” or “Bug fixes and performance improvements”. Because of that, I turned on automatic updates a long time ago and don’t bother checking the release notes any more.
Besides, it seems like every update makes products worse in some way, bloats them up or adds more tracking and paywalls. I get it, writing “We added an additional 1000 marketing partners to whom we sell your every tap” doesn’t exactly make a product more compelling.
There are exceptions, of course, especially in the indie-realm of app creators. Still, in the grander scheme of things, I feel like we’re losing something. Maybe there’s a correlation between less and less interesting changelogs and this sinking feeling that (big) tech is stagnating.
Do you miss detailed changelogs? Do you like wiring release notes for your own projects? Feel free to let me know on Mastodon.