Enhance Available Updates Report to show date of release and date of latest commit

[izmeez]

Description of the need

When looking at the available updates page it is not easy to see the date of the release and to know if there are commits that have not yet been rolled into a release. Sometimes the date of the release may be superseded by several commits and the release may be as much as two years behind the latest commits. Knowing this might help site builders and developers to solve problems more quickly and build on the work already done by others by testing if the latest commits solve the problem or not.

Likewise when browsing new modules to install, clicking on the module name will show the date of the release but shows no indication if there are commits that supersede this.

Proposed solution

Drupal, while it does not show them on the available updates page unless you have a dev version installed, does show on the project page both the latest release with date and the dev branch with the latest date.

Alternatives that have been considered

Improving the display of available updates in this way has been proposed in Drupal issue queue but has not gained traction.

I am not aware of a Drupal or Backdrop contributed module that accomplishes this.

Additional information

Attached is a screenshot from Drupal when a dev version of a module is used.

Draft of feature description for Press Release (1 paragraph at most)

Backdrop now includes information on the date of the release and the date of the latest commit in the development branch on both the available updates page and on the list of modules available to install to help site builders and developers see work that has been committed since the date of the release that may solve problems they encounter.