Request to introduce a CHANGELOG document about dscr-for-vmware HOT 16 CLOSED

Thanks for the feedback.
Btw, I think #92 is related, whose implementation would also make it a lot easier to report issues vs a specific version.

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Looks like the GitHub API can provide information about the Pull Requests. So this way we can automate the process.

So now I think we have a few tasks that need to be done:

1. Add the CHANGELOG.md with the changes made in the previous version.
2. Introduce CHANGELOG template which shows how to structure the information.
3. Update the build pipeline to automatically update the document on merge.

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This happens at release or tag time. We currently only have one release at this point, but I believe we should make these on a more frequent basis.

e.g. https://github.com/vmware/dscr-for-vmware/releases/tag/v1.0

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The Module Versioning was added to the Build Pipeline via PR #110.

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Thanks for that ( #92 ).

But doesn't that exactly prove my point.
Where can I find back what changed in which merge?

Jake's remark to relate this to release or tag time doesn't make sense imho.
A Changelog should be related to the PRs, not to the version tagging (which someone can do after a number of merges as far as I'm concerned).

These seem to be corporate rules applied to an open (?) source project.

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A CHANGELOG.md could be added to the repository but a few things should be considered:

1. Travis CI does not have an environment variable for PRs description at the moment: Environment Variables. With that in mind the automation of the process does not seem to be straightforward.
2. The PRs description should go to review as well because the CHANGELOG document should follow some standards.

So the way I see it at the moment the only solution is to have the repository admins update the document after every merged pull request.

What are your thoughts ?

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There are several plugins available afaik.
See for example Git Changelog Lib

We could also consider 'semantic releases' (see my previous release comments), and adapt something like The way to fully automated releases in open source projects

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Ok I will take a look at the links you sent and we will continue the discussion.

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The 2nd link also shows how we could perhaps better organise and document commits.
And you could still keep the, what I call, 'corporate' release cycle.

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Another option I can think of now is to add the CHANGELOG document to the review process - Adding a new section to it with the changes in the PR. This way it will go through a review process and it will be up to the standard of the document. We can also add a template which shows how a change log should look like to avoid a confusion.

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But will that not force us to enter the same info twice, in the commit and in the CHANGELOG?
Which is bound to go wrong at some point.

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Well in my opinion the two things will be slightly different. For example the commit message subject should be small and informative like: Add VSS Resource. The CHANGELOG file should contain a little more information that gives a brief description of the change. This is valid for the commit as well: The subject should be small and informative and the body should provide the adequate description. So in our case we can move the commit message body part to the CHANGELOG file and the commit message will only contain the subject without a body.

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I'm afraid I don't agree.
Modern dev environments in fact have standardised commit messages, with a lot more info in there.
Have, for example, a look at the Angular Commit Guidelines.

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Btw, in a similar way, if that requirement exists, we could add a RELEASELOG as well I guess?

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Well we certainly can think in that direction after we are ready with the CHANGELOG.md. For now the Release page has all the needed information.

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Changelog document was introduced to the repository via PR #145. Also the update of the document is part of the build now. Closing the issue.

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