Create a CHANGELOG.md file

Is your feature request related to a problem you are facing?

I have always wished that jitsi had a CHANGELOG.md file. It’s a good way for non-developers to track important changes to the software (perhaps new Stable versions), and to disseminate important news. The following revived my interest.

In #4758 @damencho wrote:

… Stable jitsi-meet now is 2.0.4468…

Is there currently a way that people can discover this?

Describe the solution you’d like

A CHANGELOG.md file could accomplish this. That file might only be updated when the main meet.jit.si server gets updated…

To keep it simple (and to minimize the effort), the entries could say:

2020-04-?? output of dpkg -l | grep jitsi followed by…

• sentence about interesting change 1
• sentence about interesting change 2
• … maybe with links to issues/forum discussions/etc…

As a practical matter, the CHANGELOG.md file could simply start with today’s release and add new releases at the top. (I’m less interested in history.)

Describe alternatives you’ve considered

Create a README that tells people how to dig through sources, browser console messages, etc. to determine the current versions.

[chaoflow]

@damencho Since recently, I’m subscribed to the release notifications for jitsi, which I receive by email. Looking at the latest release, in order to assess whether I want to update, I had to:

1. Follow the link to the release page contained in the e-mail
2. Follow the link to the changelog file
3. Acknowledge download and open in editor
4. Parse approx 200 lines / 100 items for whether they contain something I need

I think this could be improved by:

1. Using the generated changelog as base for a structured changelog taking ideas from keepachangelog. Beyond the sections proposed there, I think it would make sense to have a dedicated section for translations or leave them in the other sections, with common prefix and grouped together
2. letting release notes contain changelog verbatim so it can be inspected right away in the release notification email
3. Gather these in a top-level changelog file for easy inspection of release history

Thank you everybody involved for this great tool!

[tpo]

thanks for reopening @Echolon