How to get release note of updated package in Spacemacs

Question

In spacemacs, you can update all the installed package. However, is there a way to get a release notes for each package which have been updated ?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, there's no way to do that. There is simply no standard way to package release notes for Emacs to consume; hence there's no standard way to view release notes either. Besides, many packages—particularly smaller ones—don't even provide release notes.

---

The closest you can get is the commit list that Spacemacs' package menu offers:

1. Open the package menu with SPC a k,
2. type F i to narrow the list down to installed packages,
3. navigate to the package whose changelog you'd like to see,
4. and then type L.

A new buffer with the commit log will pop up, where "new" commits since the last update are in bold face.

However, this feature has limitations: It is only available for MELPA, and only for packages hosted on Github. "New" is also not very exact, as it's based on the timestamp of the release which is naturally inaccurate, the more, since Git's timestamps do not actually reflect the actual order of commits.