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Changelog

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Izzy edited this page Jan 15, 2018 · 1 revision

As the name suggest, this is a log of changes. In context of the IzzySoft Release Framework, one may get confused what kind of ChangeLog is spoken about, hence here a short introduction to the different types.

Conventional ChangeLog

This is where developers usually record their changes - if they do at all (there's no law to enforce this action ;)). Usually, this is a plain ASCII text file, and AFAIK there is no official convention of how this file should be formatted. This means, that everybody could use their own styles - and that's what you find comparing those ChangeLog files from different projects. What they mostly have in common is that changes are grouped by releases - but sometimes they are rather grouped by date. Following the grouping option will be the list of changes done, again using different syntaxes - from a simple enumeration to detailed description "diaries" or distinctive lists (see below).

RPM ChangeLog

RPM also knows about a kind of ChangeLog. The .spec files must have a section called %changelog (yes, this is mandatory) with at least one entry starting with a date line. pkgmake will create such and entry, using the current date and the comment that the package was created - just to satisfy rpmbuild. Optionally it can include a complete ChangeLog on demand, which must comply to RPMs requirements: A line starting with the date, followed by one or more lines with change records. relman can create such a ChangeLog out of a file containing HistView ChangeLog input (see below). A valid RPM ChangeLog look s like this:

* Sun Aug 19 12:00:00 2007 Andreas Itzchak Rehberg <email@domain.com>
- packaged relman_0.1.3-izzy1 using pkgmake v0.1.5 & relman v0.1.3

HistView ChangeLog input

HistView uses a more distinct form of the "conventional" ChangeLog to indicate different types of changes, grouped by releases. This allows a nice-formatted HTML output, making it easy for the reader to spot new features or bug fixes without having to read all. And to automatically create links to download the corresponding files. To give a basic example for a HistView ChangeLog file:

v0.1.5 (22.10.2007)
-------------------
! fixed a bug
+ added a new feature
- dropped some functionality
* changed something, e.g. cleanup or the like

Read more about this on the HistView homepage.

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