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Updating Changelogs.md

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Updating Changelogs

A changelog is a file which contains a curated, chronologically ordered list of notable changes for each version of a package. The main purpose of changelogs (in general) is to inform users and contributors about changes that have been made in subsequent versions. However, in the expo/expo repository, they have one more purpose — to help us decide how to bump the package version when we publish it (see categories' descriptions for more).

Most of the packages inside packages directory have their own changelogs, and these changelogs should be updated each time a change is made to their package.

Changelog entries

Each bullet point in the changelog is called an entry. It describes the change that has been introduced in the package in a pull request / commit. Here is what defines a good changelog entry:

  • It is descriptive and concise — explains well the change to a reader who has zero context about the change. If you have trouble making it both concise and descriptive, err on the side of descriptive.
  • It is placed under Unpublished version and the appropriate category (follow rules described here).
  • It has links to the associated PR and the GitHub profile of the author (expo-bot can suggest them for you, read more below in this section).
  • It may contain only text and links. Any other markdown elements (such as lists, headers, blockquotes, tables, images, inline HTML) are not permitted — if you need them to provide important tips for the users to adapt to the (breaking) change, you should put this in the PR description or link to a separate document on expo/fyi.

An example of the correct entry:

- Added a guide about updating changelogs in the packages. (#13075 by @tsapeta)

We would like each entry to contain links to the PR and author's profile, so that everyone can find out more details about that change by opening the PR page or, as a last resort, contacting the author. When a changed package is about to be published, our automated script runs through PRs referenced in the changelog to find closed issues and then comments on such issues to let subscribed users know that the fix is available to the public (usually as next tag on npm). At first it might sound tedious and annoying to create a PR before the changelog entry (to get the PR number), then go back and update changelog and push once again; but, thanks to our code reviewing bot, you can skip adding links in your changelog entries manually — the bot will post code review suggestions to add them.

Categories

Changes can be grouped within several predefined categories (Markdown sections with a third-level heading). It's important to put the entries under correct category because the categories are also used in the publish script to help decide how to bump the package version. Here is a list of predefined categories used across all changelogs in the repository 👇

  • 🛠 Breaking changes

    For changes in the API that may require users to change their code or project settings. Implies major bump when publishing the package.

  • 🎉 New features

    For non-breaking changes in the public API that may bring some new value to the user. New features that are internal (are not user-facing) should rather go into "Others" category. Implies at least minor bump when publishing the package.

  • 🐛 Bug fixes

    For bug fixes and changes to the documentation that clarify any ambiguities.

  • ⚠️ Notices

    For changes that don't fit into the above categories, but that users should be aware of, because they deprecate existing API while still keeping backwards compatibility or cause behavior changes in some corner cases.

  • 💡 Others

    Anything that doesn't apply to the other types. Such changes are usually not very important for the users, but might come in handy for other contributors (e.g. essential internal changes, refactors, build tools or language version updates, some routine work).

  • 📚 3rd party library updates

    Use it when you upgraded 3rd-party library (such as react-native-reanimated, react-native-webview) in Expo Go (used only in root's changelog).

Tools

  • et add-changelog

    Lets you automate adding a changelog entry to the package. Run et add-changelog --help for more details.

  • et merge-changelogs

    This command is intended to be used by people doing a SDK release — it merges changelog entries from all SDK packages as of the previous SDK version and puts them into the root's CHANGELOG.md.