Release notes, what for? [closed]

Question

What are release notes for and who reads them? Should/could they be automated by just spitting out bug fixes for the current release, or do they warrant careful human editing? So, anybody with a link to best practices(reasoning behind) in regards to software release notes?

Answer 1

Bugfixes and added features. Users will read them to determine if they should go to the trouble of installing an incremental upgrade, or wait until the next release because this one doesn't add any features they need or fix any bugs in features that they were using.

I'd say they at least require a human to read through them and make sure that each note is useful. It depends how good the comments on your bug fixes are.

Answer 2

Release notes are also important to your testing organization (if you have one), so that they know what's changed in the release and needs testing.