### Problem to solve Currently, we rarely highlight new features within GitLab. There is no inline link to our monthly release post that matches the version of the GitLab instance. ##### Thoughts - Promote our release post or something similar cc: @tauriedavis - Make sure people actually update the instance whenever a new release is out - Better place to show version info than on the help page - Notify of new version ### Proposal * For the first iteration, we add a "What's new?" item to the Help dropdown as depicted in the design below. * Tell instances about new things that have been added in their current version by adding static release notes that live locally on the instance. * For a first iteration, we can just generate these from `CHANGELOG.md`. * Tell instances about new things that have been added in future versions: * I think that the boring/most straightforward approach here is to just always link to the latest major release post. For a first iteration, we can link to the latest major release by linking to a static URL on `about.gitlab.com` that redirects to the most recent release post. Future iterations: * In the future, we can make this approach fancier and more friendly to read. Maybe by writing specific release notes from the release post. * Create an endpoint on `about.gitlab.com` which receives a url param of the instance version. This would let us create a cool diff between your instance version and latest. <img src="https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/uploads/3e85d2398f270965e6e16f5a5d75ac36/variations.png" width=345px> ### Previous Proposal * For the first iteration, we add a "What's new?" item to the Help dropdown as depicted in the design below. * This new item will be placed between `Help` and `Contribute to GitLab`. * The "What's new?" row should link to the release post for the installed version. * For patch releases, the row will link to the blog post for the **corresponding** major or minor release (e.g. an `11.6.3` installation links to `11.6`) * For release candidates, the row will link to the blog post for the **previous** major or minor release (e.g. a `11.6-RC3` installation links to `11.5`) ### Links / references * https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/24479 * https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/23598 * https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/2359814381