A changelog is a log or record of all notable changes made to a project. The project is often a

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or software project, and the changelog usually includes records of changes such as bug fixes, new features, etc. Some

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projects include a changelog as one of the top-level files in their distribution. A changelog has historically included all changes made to a project. The "Keep a Changelog" site instead advocates that a changelog ''not'' include ''all'' changes, but that it should instead contain "a curated, chronologically ordered list of notable changes for each version of a project" and should not be a "dump" of a git log "because this helps nobody". Although the canonical naming convention for the file is ''ChangeLog'', it is sometimes alternatively named as ''CHANGES'' or ''HISTORY'' (''NEWS'' is usually a different file reflecting changes between releases, not between the commits). Another convention is to call it a ''CHANGELOG''. Some project maintainers will append a ''.txt'' suffix to the file name if the changelog is

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, a ''.md'' suffix if it is in

Markdown Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber and Aaron Swartz created Markdown in 2004 as a markup language that is appealing to human readers in its source code form. Markdown i ...

, or a ''.rst'' suffix if it is in

reStructuredText reStructuredText (RST, ReST, or reST) is a file format for textual data used primarily in the Python programming language community for technical documentation. It is part of the Docutils project of the Python Doc-SIG (Documentation Special Inte ...

. Some

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systems are able to generate the relevant information for a changelog, if the goal is to include all changes. A golang Change Log is synonymous with a set of code changes and the associated code review.

Format

Changelog files are organized by paragraphs, which define a unique change within a function or file. The GNU Coding standards recommend the following format:

YYYY-MM-DD␣␣John Doe␣␣

    * myfile.ext (myfunction): my changes made
    additional changes

    * myfile.ext (unrelated_change): my changes made
    to myfile.ext but completely unrelated to the above

    * anotherfile.ext (somefunction): more changes made by me

Note that between the date and the name, and again between the name and the email address, there are two spaces each. It is common to enclose the email address in < and >. The Emacs editor creates such entries when creating additional changelog entries.

Changelogs in wikis

Most

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software includes ''changelogs'' as a fundamental feature (often called ''history'' in this context). For example, the "View history" link at the top Help:Page_history. of a

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entry links to that page's changelog. This feature is vital for complying with the attribution requirements of some copyright licenses.

Product changelogs

A product changelog can keep customers in the loop about what's new. It helps to announce new features, latest releases, and relevant news directly in-app.

Notes

{{reflist

External links

GNU Coding Standards: Change Logs

Keep a CHANGELOG

Checklist for creating a changelog
Computer files Free software culture and documents Technical communication

Format

Changelogs in wikis

Product changelogs

See also

Notes

External links