A Changelog for the Better
It is a new year which means it is time for a few resolutions. One change I have in mind for the new year is maintaining better change logs for my PowerShell projects. This is one of those items that many people don’t pay much attention to. It often falls into the documentation category, which is usually the last thing that gets any attention, if it does at all. But we should do better.
What is a Change Log?
The first thing to address is a definition. What is a change log, and why does it matter? A change log keeps track of the history of changes to your project. Typically, the change log is structured around a release. A release is a point-in-time snapshot of your project, usually notated with a version number. The change log documents, as the name implies, what has changed between releases.
This information is valuable. For the author, the change log keeps track of what changes were made and when. This can be helpful when troubleshooting a problem or bug. We all know that bugs usually arise because we changed something in the code. Knowing what we changed makes it easier to track down what went wrong.