Allow ad hoc releases of experimental core plugins

[Jermolene]

It is proposed that plugins whose stability level is "experimental" be allowed to follow their own release schedule, with releases going to production as soon as they are ready.

There are a few changes that will need to be coordinated to make this happen:

• Allow plugins to specify a minimum core version beyond which they will refuse to be installed
• Give plugins a "Release Notes" or "Changelog" tab with a structured display of changes to the plugin
• Devise and document the release procedure (which is essentially copying files under 'plugins/tiddlywiki/*' from 'master' to 'tiddlywiki-com')

For the release notes, the tiddler $:/plugins/tiddlywiki/pluginname/changelog would be a data dictionary mapping version numbers to a brief description of the release of the form 2024-08-24 Description of this update. If plugins wish to add more documentation about a release they can use tiddlers incorporating the version number of the form $:/plugins/tiddlywiki/pluginname/changelog/v1.0.0 that would contain the full description of the release.

[pmario]

I think, that the full description of the plugin-history should be part of a demo-edition.

The plugin itself should only contain the minimal changelog-info. Over time there may be plugins, where the history is much longer than the plugin code itself.

I personally consider this a waste of space.

eg: My custom-markup plugin has a long list of history. The plugin itself only contains the latest 2 or 3 points and a link to the full history on the demo page.

Part of the plugin

---

Part of the Demo Page

[Jermolene]

I think, that the full description of the plugin-history should be part of a demo-edition.

The plugin itself should only contain the minimal changelog-info. Over time there may be plugins, where the history is much longer than the plugin code itself.

With the scheme I outlined it is entirely up to the plugin publisher how much information they retain.

[pmario]

With the scheme I outlined it is entirely up to the plugin publisher how much information they retain.

That's right. But I was thinking about core plugins. We should also try to keep it minimalistic

[Jermolene]

Hi @pmario generally I do not share your concern about wasting space. When and if we encounter the problem where a core plugin has overly length release notes we can consider policies for dealing with it.