An Announcement (ANN) is a Usenet, Mailing list, or E-mail message sent to notify subscribers that a software project has made a new software release version. Newsgroup announcement recipients often have a name like "comp.somegroup.announce". Mailing list announcement recipients often have a name like "toolname-announce". Most software projects that make announcements are open source.

In an announcement the subject line commonly contains the abbreviated prefix ANN:.

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:

• About - a short paragraph summary of the tool's purpose
• Changes - a list of the highest impact changes since the last release (should be brief since the changelog comprises the definitive list)
• Resources - links to project pages of interest, such as homepage, where to download, bug tracker, etc.

Some additional, optional fields might include Highlights, Author(s), License, Requirements, and Release History

Announcement messages should always be sent in plain text form.

Try searching the newsgroup comp.lang.python.announce for a number of example announcements.

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/

Usenet