Outdated release notes link

[leoschwarz]

On the page https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/documentation.html there is the link to Release Notes (https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/stable/RELEASES.md) but it has either been forgotten to push the recent updates to this branch (on master there are entries for 1.19 and 1.20) or it's not going to be updated anymore and the link on the web page should be changed to master (will new additions be merged into master only once the version is released as stable?).

[steveklabnik]

That always links to the latest release for stable, but sometimes notes don't make it into the correct stable branch, as we land changes on nightly. The link should probably point to master instead for this reason.

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On Wed, Oct 4, 2017 at 5:59 AM, Leo Schwarz ***@***.***> wrote: On the page https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/documentation.html there is the link to Release Notes (https://github.com/rust-lang/ rust/blob/stable/RELEASES.md) but it has either been forgotten to push the recent updates to this branch (on master there are entries for 1.19 and 1.20) or it's not going to be updated anymore and the link on the web page should be changed to master (will new additions be merged into master only once the version is released as stable?). — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#941>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AABsijtVx_ATprD_FmnOfilEUnfz2TGWks5so1b0gaJpZM4PtXdj> .

[abitrolly]

https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/stable/RELEASES.md points to 0.20.0.

And https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/1.21.0/RELEASES.md points to 0.21.0 too.

Is there an omission in release process?

[steveklabnik]

@abitrolly yes, sometimes release notes don't make it into the branch for that release, as I said above.

[abitrolly]

Where is the current release procedure documented?

[steveklabnik]

https://forge.rust-lang.org/release-process.html

[abitrolly]

No step for updating release notes. Why they are on master and not even in beta?

[steveklabnik]

As I mentioned above, new PRs always land in master. We sometimes port things back to beta. We only port things to stable if we're planning a stable release, which almost never happens.

Because of this, when it's time to think about cutting a release, beta has always been branched. This means that the PRs for release notes would have to land on master, and then be backported to beta, and then land there, right in the middle of all the other work for the release.

If the release notes were prepared six weeks ahead of time, then in theory, it would work; but creating release notes is a huge job, and so nobody has wanted to do two releases' worth of notes at the same time, in order to get us ahead so this time schedule would work. Additionally, then the notes would also have to be modified if things land on beta.

Basically, all of this complexity and work hasn't been worth it yet, as you can always check master to see the notes anyway. Yes, it would be nice, but there's always so much work to do. We do accept help in making the release notes, so if this is something you care deeply about, putting in the work to fix it would be great! happy to walk you through that process if you're interested.

[abitrolly]

Let's wait for the problem to manifest itself again. Every hit increases the chance to make this usability/process issue fixed. )