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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 chan
by 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 agoI'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 agoChangelog 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.