I dont actually think those particular changes are (yet?) some sort of requirement.
And besides which the mkinitcpio.conf.pacnew file would have been generated something like weeks ago.
But you should definitely, always, and manually, handle your pacnews.
To print them;
pacdiff -o
To manage them;
pacdiff -s
If you want to use something other than the default vim diff;
DIFFPROG=meld pacdiff -s
( Use the v [view] option to open the diff program and apply changes. )