Good ways to manage a changelog using git?

git github changelog
Topher Fangio picture Topher Fangio · Aug 19, 2010 · Viewed 115.5k times · Source

I've been using Git for a while now, and I recently started using it to tag my releases so that I could more easily keep track of changes and be able to see which version each of our clients are running (unfortunately the code currently mandates that each client have their own copy of the PHP site; I'm changing this, but it's slow-going).

In any case, we're starting to build some momentum, I thought it would be really good to be able to show people what has changed since the last release. Problem is, I haven't been maintaining a changelog because I don't have a good idea of how to go about it. For this particular time, I can run through the log and manually create one, but that will get tiring very quickly.

I tried googling "git changelog" and "git manage changelog" but I didn't find anything that really talked about the workflow of code changes and how that coincides with the changelog. We're currently following Rein Henrichs' development workflow and I would love something that went along with that.

Is there a standard approach that I am missing, or is this an area where everybody does their own thing?

Thanks very much for your comments/answers!

Answer

user1241335 picture user1241335 · Mar 18, 2014

This was about 3-4 years ago, but for the sake of future searchers, it's now possible to generate gorgeous logs with:

git log --oneline --decorate

Or, if you want it even prettier (with color for terminal):

git log --oneline --decorate --color

Piping that output to ChangeLog is what I currently use in all my projects, it's simply amazing.

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