32 ms·

Wouldn't proper use of `git rebase --interactive` make changelogs unnecessary?

• okket 8y ago
  No. The commit history is for the developer perspective, the changelog is for the user perspective. As a user you don't want and need all the details what changed between two releases. As a developer you absolutely need to be able to look this information up.
  • opk 8y ago
    I've always thought of the term changelog as being the full list of every single change for the purposes of developers. Back before we had git and used CVS or patches it was necessary to track all changes and this was often in a file named ChangeLog. User relevant changes go in release notes or (a NEWS file if you follow GNU conventions).
    • okket 8y ago
      Changelog is a bit ambiguous, indeed. Release notes would be a more fitting name, but also not ideal IMHO. If you want to know what was changed and when, you need the commit history anyway. Also for bisecting. I'd argue these days changelog and release notes are more interchangeable than changelog and commit history. The 'NEWS' GNU-ism never really caught on, maybe because news does not imply log/history.
• slaymaker1907 8y ago
  Not everyone who might be interested in your changelog will be a developer. Even developers don't want to go trawling through commit history to know changes at a high level.
  • anonytrary 8y ago
    Okay, fine -- but why couldn't you just derive a changelog from version-change commits which are meant for summarizing high-level changes in the version being committed? That way, you don't keep multiple sources of truth for version change information, while still benefiting from keeping a concise changelog without unnecessary commits in it.