Heretofor, all updates have had a statement in Release Notes similar to the following:
"No changes have been made to the .htaccess, web.config, robots.txt or default settings.php files in this release, so upgrading custom versions of those files is not necessary if your site is already on the previous release."

Has this practice ceased? Are users expected to make a line to line comparison of subject files to detect changes? Please enlighten me if I've overlooked the obvious again.

Thank you...

Comments

JakeRogers created an issue. See original summary.

cilefen’s picture

cilefen commented
Priority: Critical » Normal
Issue tags: -Instructional standards

Which specific release notes are you referring-to that is missing the statement? These files do change sometimes. I think .htaccess changed in 8.9.0.

#3092563: Avoid overwriting .htaccess changes during scaffolding > security problem

jakerogers’s picture

jakerogers commented

Perhaps a better question is "why not include some unique identifier within these files (maybe vs# akin to Modules), which will allow user to easily and quickly distinguish these critical files which need updating?"

Version: 8.9.x-dev » 9.2.x-dev

Drupal 8 is end-of-life as of November 17, 2021. There will not be further changes made to Drupal 8. Bugfixes are now made to the 9.3.x and higher branches only. For more information see the Drupal core minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal core release cycle.

Version: 9.2.x-dev » 9.3.x-dev

Version: 9.3.x-dev » 9.4.x-dev

Drupal 9.3.15 was released on June 1st, 2022 and is the final full bugfix release for the Drupal 9.3.x series. Drupal 9.3.x will not receive any further development aside from security fixes. Drupal 9 bug reports should be targeted for the 9.4.x-dev branch from now on, and new development or disruptive changes should be targeted for the 9.5.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal core minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal core release cycle.

Version: 9.4.x-dev » 9.5.x-dev

Drupal 9.4.9 was released on December 7, 2022 and is the final full bugfix release for the Drupal 9.4.x series. Drupal 9.4.x will not receive any further development aside from security fixes. Drupal 9 bug reports should be targeted for the 9.5.x-dev branch from now on, and new development or disruptive changes should be targeted for the 10.1.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal core minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal core release cycle.

xjm’s picture

xjm
she/her
Primary language English
commented
Status: Active » Closed (works as designed)

It is already a standard practice to highlight such changes at the very top of the release update information, under the header "Changes to site-owner managed files". For example:
https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/releases/9.4.0#site-owner-managed

If no such changes are included, the section will be absent. Sometimes, on security releases only, we include this text for clarity:

Important update information
No changes have been made to the .htaccess, web.config, robots.txt, or default settings.php files in this release, so updating custom versions of those files is not necessary if your site is already on the previous release.

If you encounter a change to one of these files that you did not expect, be sure to read previous release notes. For example, if you are updating from Drupal 9.4.4 to the latest release, you need to account for all the release notes in between as well, including the changes to these files in Drupal 9.4.7.

Otherwise, missing information in the release notes can be reported as a bug in the core queue or raised as an issue in Drupal Slack.

In checking previous releases I noticed the formatting is inconsistent sometimes. We'll try to be more consistent in the future. Thanks for your feedback!

Marking "Works as designed" since this is already standard policy. Individual mistakes or missing info should be filed as bugs. Thanks!