Module Release Notes

Owned by Wyclif Luyima
Last updated: Oct 30, 2014
1 min read

Release notes are a good way to communicate to users the changes and enhancements in a new version of any piece of software, this page aims to provide module developers with the best practices to adhere to when creating release notes for their modules. For an example, you can refer to the release notes for the OpenMRS platform releases e.g Platform Release Notes 1.10.0, not everything in the platform release notes will apply to modules but it provides a good basis or guideline to follow. For a module example see the 'Release Notes' section on the Rest Module Documentation page. The release notes for each module version need to include the following:

  • A list of tickets for the new features
  • A list of the tickets for major bug fixes
  • A list of the data model changes in the release, typically these would be the comments for the respective liquibase changests in the liquibase.xml file assuming they were well written to explain what they are doing. If your module doesn't add any tables or modify anything in the DB then this can be optional.
  • Any other things an implementer might need to know when upgrading to the release e.g known incompatibilities with certain OpenMRS platforms or other module versions
  • A list of all tickets included in the release

If a module's versions are managed properly in JIRA and the fix versions are set well on the closed module tickets in the release, JIRA provides a way for generating release notes, it creates separate lists for new features and bug fixes based on the ticket issues types in JIRA.