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**Olivier Lacan:** That was close. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Did I do good? Was it close? |
**Olivier Lacan:** You did better in practice. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I did, yeah... Long story short, our guest is French, so obviously his name is a little difficult to pronounce. I'm here, Jerod's here, and we're here to talk about changlogging, which is sort of meta in a sense... And if you know the voice of Olivier, then you've probably heard it on Ruby5; you're ... |
**Olivier Lacan:** Sadly, yes. I talk a lot. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, in any case, welcome to the show. |
**Olivier Lacan:** Thank you. I'm happy to be here. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It is sort of meta, because I've stumbled upon this project of yours which is Keep a Changelog; the subtitle is "Don't let your friends dump git logs into changelogs", which I thought was pretty cool, because you know, we're "The Changelog", and everybody who does open source - or any sort of softwa... |
**Olivier Lacan:** \[04:09\] This is what I wish people would do, but I've realized in the recent months as I was actually going through upgrading a lot of old apps, a lot of apps that we have internally, that people actually don't do that. People actually tend to think that their software maintains itself, or as long ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, even think about those who are shipping apps to the App Store, like Apple's App Store, or the Play Store, even those apps... Actually, a lot of the developers have a lot of fun with these -- I don't know if they're called changelogs there or not, but... |
**Olivier Lacan:** Release notes I think they call them... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Release notes, yeah... But it's still the same thing. |
**Olivier Lacan:** Yeah. I actually have a folder of screenshots that every time one of those developers makes an amazing changelog where they're either really funny or they actually go through insane lengths to explain "By the way, watch out - this is the new stuff that's in this version. You might wanna stick to this... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** The issue number, or something. Yeah, "Give me some context." |
**Olivier Lacan:** Yeah, and especially for iOS stuff, so many little subtle bugs that you could make people happy if you just mentioned what bug you fixed. It seems so obvious, but people don't do it. |
**Jerod Santo:** So is there a semantic difference between changelog and release notes? Maybe just the audience? It seems like -- when I think of a changelog, I think of the audience being technically sound, and maybe even developers... When I think of release notes, maybe it's just in the app store, and obviously you'... |
**Olivier Lacan:** Right. I realized that while I was doing this project. As soon as I put it up, someone came up and said to me, "Hey, so you're calling this a changelog, and there's actually a different thing called History or News" and in the GNU community there's apparently a differentiation between those two. So t... |
If we use Git and we can use git log, why would you ever -- you can do the same thing on GitHub; you can do a compare between two tags or two specific release commits, and you will see that diff, you will see those commit messages, and you can go through every single one and how -- sometimes there's just an angry devel... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So the homepage for this project is keepachangelog.com. If you're listening live, you wanna follow along -- this is a podcast, so you are listening if you're hearing this... But keepachangelog.com, and one of the questions down there says (to Jerod's question) "Is there a standard changelog format?"... |
It's got this idea of Added, Deprecated, Removed, Fixed, which I think is really important, because it kind of gives you a rhythm to follow at least, you know? |
**Olivier Lacan:** \[08:14\] Yeah, and this is something that I noticed - a lot of people just say what was added and say what was removed, but they don't say "Okay, was something not deprecated?" Because usually, when you parse things, it's also as important to you to know that nothing was deprecated in this version, ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I love the dog you have in the background, too. You warned us, but the dog is still there. I might edit that out, but I don't think so... |
**Olivier Lacan:** Well, he's actually going nuts... He's having fun right now. He's actually never done that before, but I think he can sense that I'm talking, and he's like "Okay, let me screw with him." |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's giving your side of the audio a little character, so to speak. |
**Olivier Lacan:** Yes. |
**Jerod Santo:** So let me read your definition here of a changelog back at you, and then we can kind of discuss the difference between this and other things that may exist. You say that "A changelog is a file which contains a curated, chronologically ordered list of notable changes for each version of an open source p... |
**Olivier Lacan:** Right. |
**Jerod Santo:** So I'm guessing that -- I'm reading in the tea leaves here that you're emphasizing curation, chronologically ordered and notable as kind of the key differentiators between this and what might be a history file, which maybe is all the commit logs. Is that fair? |
**Olivier Lacan:** That's very fair. And I think the difference is clear in the same sense -- so if you think of an API, a public-facing API, when you change things on the API, you wanna make sure that everybody understands what they are; not really the low-level stuff that you changed, but the actual public API stuff. |
So the private API stuff is nice to know, it's good, but it's not as crucial for you to know. This is basically the same differentiation -- this is for the outward world, not the people who work on the project necessarily. |
The people who work on the project know that there were things added privately, that they did some groundwork for a new release, for instance, but that's not necessarily notable for the people using the software. And I think that actually -- we talked earlier about release notes for iOS apps or just Android apps... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Olivier Lacan:** I feel like -- I wish open source developers would basically crank up the empathy on their open source end users the same way that iOS developers sometimes do with their paid customers... Because yes, people don't pay, but if you keep such a well-curated list of all the changes, first of all it encou... |
For instance, I think Haml was an example... I was waiting for a feature in Haml or a feature in Redcarpet, in one of those things, and I was about to start working on it, and I thought "Okay, so it's not listed in the readme, I can't find it anywhere", and I went through the changelog real quick and Boom, there it was... |
Of course, you can improve your feature descriptions on your library, but it's also great for people to just jump in and see, "Wow...!" Yeah, when you jump in a project, you always assess "How well-maintained is this project?" What better way to see how well-maintained a project is than show "You know what - every mont... |
**Jerod Santo:** \[12:05\] Yeah, absolutely. I think as a user of open source software and somebody who's written a lot of software over the years, I used to get really excited for every single project update. I was like, "Oh, I can't wait to upgrade, and get this in there...", and kind of as you get scar tissue to the... |
**Olivier Lacan:** That's so sad! |
**Jerod Santo:** But let me just say, a solid change, like a release notes or a changelog that actually provides me the information of "Here's the value in upgrading to our newest release", like high-level bullet points, kind of what you're advocating for here, of like "Here's why it's worth it for you. Here's the new ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That process you talk about, too... To your point, Olivier, you say that you wish more software developers, more open source developers took some -- I'm not sure what your exact words were, but I'll think of it like just making it an important thing to curate (to use your own words back at you) this... |
**Olivier Lacan:** It's a good point, and... I think the word I used was "empathy." And it's a difficult thing, because when you're drained, when you've worked so hard - and I know that a lot of people get a lot of flack on their issues, and people come in and just crap all over their project, even though they've worke... |
To me, if you keep a changelog and you do that often and regularly, you're actually saving yourself the hassle of having to deal with people who misunderstand or who are having upgrade issues. Basically, you're just saving yourself a lot of time... And it's hard to see, of course, because just writing down little thing... |
But if you do, then you're actually allowing your project to be more lightweight, in a way... Because stuff is written down, and you don't have to worry -- you're not the central repository of "Will this break my software?" The file is. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Jerod Santo:** Well, let me just kind of -- this might be hard for the listening audience, but kind of just go through your version on keepachangelog.com... Just kind of describe the format that you've laid out, because... |
**Olivier Lacan:** This is sexy. Let's read the changelog together. |
**Jerod Santo:** \[laughs\] I'm gonna do it really slowly. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Should I slow the music down, and everything? |
**Olivier Lacan:** Mm-hm. Get some Barry White rolling. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Put your bassy voice on, Jerod. |
**Olivier Lacan:** Yes. |
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