Beachball creates an automated changelog. While this is awesome it creates a good, but not great, changelog. Hence we have an extra step before publishing our changelog: pruning the changelog.
This means going through the auto generated changelog and fixing it up for customers to be able to read.
This could entail doing any or all of the following:
- Coupling entries that are for the same feature
- Often we create multiple, small PRs for the one feature, if this is the case each changelog entry should be merged into a single changelog entry and all PRs should be linked.
- Breaking a changelog entry into multiple separate entries
- If a PR went in that fixed two distinctly different tasks, the entry should be broken into two separate entries that both link back to the same PR.
- Fixing the purpose of a changelog entry if the meaning was unclear.
- Fixing up spelling and grammar
Ideally most of these are handled at PR time when the PR is reviewed. This reduces the work for whoever is creating the new release.
Can I go back and make changes to changelogs at any time? What about older versions?
Yes! This is encouraged. If something in the changelog is unclear or wrong, no matter where it is in the changelog, definitely make a change to it and submit a PR.