add a link to the release announcement posts for each version on https://wordpress.org/download/releases/

[pbiron]

I'm not sure how that page is maintained (e.g., whether it is auto-generated or not), so not sure how hard this would be to do.

To make it easier to style on small screens, it would probably be better for the release number to be the link text...rather than adding another column to the tables.

Just a thought...not super important :-)

[coffee2code]

While I agree this would be a nice-to-have, I don't think it's worth the effort (not just the implementation effort, but the fact that it would be another thing that needs updating after every release).

The source for the display of the page itself is the page-download-releases.php template of the wporg-main theme.

Information about the releases is retrieved via a call to get_breakdown() or get_releases_breakdown(), both of which aren't open-sourced. But the info about the releases that is returned is fully autogenerated from a directory listing of all packaged releases.

At minimum, the blog post URL would have to be correlated to a release number and set somewhere so that the template could add the link. This adds an extra step to the release checklist. And if we want to be thorough, that would also mean after every minor release, beta, and RC.

At present, the release posts are actually linked via the ​History page, which is itself already linked from the ​Releases page. Obviously that's not complete since it only links the major releases and not minor releases, betas, or RCs.

To be implemented, we'd need the following to happen, at minimum:

• Obtain some sort of consensus that the effort is worthwhile since someone from the core team, likely in conjunction with the meta team, would have to update the release number -> blog post URL association after each release (for major, minor, beta, and RC assuming a post is made). The task in general isn't imperative, but if we're going to do it then it should be done in a fairly timely fashion. The task would need to be added to the release checklist(s).
• Implement a means to correlate release version numbers with their associated blog URLs somewhere. This could be hardcoded in an array in a template file, set within an array in a constant, set as a setting on the main w.org site, or even returned via an API.
• Correlate all previous releases with their associated blog posts. (There's a lot of them.)
• Update the page-download-releases.php template to retrieve the list of URLs and add them in the appropriate places (likely linking the version numbers in the tables as proposed).

If someone wants to champion and shephard this, we can consider it more.

Worth considering is that if the release posts URLs are correlated and available in a more general fashion than just for this purpose, we could make use of it elsewhere as the de facto URLs for references to WP releases.

[pbiron]

@coffee2code thanx for the explanation about how that page is generated.

I agree that it's probably not worth the time/effort...it was just a thought.

[coffee2code]

@pbiron: The suggestion is certainly appreciated though! And would be beneficial if implemented.

I hope it didn't seem like I was coming down on the idea with an excess of explanation to shoot down something that was succinctly proposed.

I wanted to provide background for anyone in the future who may pursue this or something like it. And in thinking about it, the critical aspect of implementing this (getting the releases correlated to their associated release blog post URL) could prove useful elsewhere on .org.

[pbiron]

I hope it didn't seem like I was coming down on the idea with an excess of explanation to shoot down something that was succinctly proposed.

Not at all. I understand completely.