Announcement (computing)


An announcement is a Usenet, mailing list or e-mail message sent to notify subscribers that a software project has made a new release version. Newsgroup announcement recipients often have a name like "comp.somegroup.announce". Mailing list announcement recipients often have a name like "toolname-announce". In an announcement, the subject line commonly contains the abbreviated prefix ANN: or .
The contents of an announcement usually contain a title line which contains the tool name, version, release name, and date. Additional contents often fall into the following message sections:
Some additional, optional fields might include "Highlights", "Author", "License", "Requirements", and "Release History".
Announcement messages are usually sent in plain text form.

Example

Example announcement message subject line:
ANN: fooutils 0.9.42 beta released
Example announcement message contents:

 
=
 Fooutils 0.9.42 Beta Released -- 2006 Feb 16
 
=
 ANNOUNCING Fooutils v0.2.12beta, the first beta release.
 About Fooutils
 --------------
 Fooutils are a set of utilities that...
 Changes
 -------
 Improved the searching facility by including...
 Fixed bugs: #123, #456,...
 Resources
 ---------
 Homepage:
 http://fooutils.org
 Documentation:
 http://fooutils.org/docs
 Download:
 http://fooutils.org/download
 Bug Tracker:
 http://fooutils.org/newticket
 Mailing Lists:
 http://lists.fooutils.org/