Occasionally, there are changes to the civicrm.settings.php file. It doesn't feel clear to me, how that is communicated (i.e. how I'd know I should refresh my file). While it is technically listed in the full release notes, sometimes it can be buried in the miscellany section. Would it make sense to add a tip to the upgrade documentation: https://docs.civicrm.org/sysadmin/en/latest/upgrade/ along the lines that you should check for changes to the settings file when running an upgrade?