[TxMt] Re: what changed in TextMate 2.0 beta 12?

[Allan Odgaard]

On 9 Aug 2016, at 16:00, Christian Rosentreter wrote:

> On a related note: would it be possible to show the list of changes in 
> the update notification dialog? It always pops up announcing a new 
> version without giving any details besides the version numbers. The 
> user can only learn about the changes after the update is installed.
>
> That's a bit like playing Russian roulette.

I don’t hope updating TextMate feels like playing Russian roulette :)

As a user I prefer to see the changes after update because I want to 
update my software, and it can take me longer to read the list of 
changes than it takes to download the new version, or if the list of 
changes is long, I’ll read it later.

As a developer having to provide the changes to older clients is a bit 
of added complexity because I have multiple update channels and I do 
revise the changes (e.g. the list included with beta 12 is revised 
compared to the nightly build that preceded it).

As a developer, I would also rather not see people skip updates because 
they think it brings nothing of interest. The list of changes is 
somewhat limited to what I want to call attention to, so I generally 
leave out fixes and changes that are easy to discover.

> A change included in an update might directly influence or even 
> (temporarily) break the user's workflow, see the recent blacklisting 
> of some bundle which broke the workflow of a fellow subscriber here on 
> the mailing list.

It “broke” only because I did not mention it in the changes, as the 
relevant change entry mention that it was simply a blacklist that could 
be changed by the user.

IOW had the user in question seen the list of changes, it would not have 
helped, since I had not mentioned it. Once it was mentioned, it should 
not have made the user skip the update, since it included the proper 
info about how to override the blacklist.

But if you are on nightly builds and something breaks, you can easily go 
back to regular builds via Preferences → Software Update → Check Now 
(TextMate then offers you to downgrade when you click “Check Now”).

Furthermore, if something breaks your workflow, it should be in your 
interest to report it rather than just stop updating TextMate :)