An announcement (ANN) 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 [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:
Some additional, optional fields might include "Highlights", "Author(s)", "License", "Requirements", and "Release History".
Announcement messages are usually sent in plain text form.
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/