Changelog

changelog is a small utility to keep track of the maintenance done to a Unix-like system. It acts as a journal and relies on the sysadmin(s) to stay up to date and complete.

It can be used as part of scripts, both for adding and viewing. For example, as part of the motd to show the last changes done to a system, or as part of an orchestration system to keep track of the last actions.

changelog has been tested on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris and Debian GNU/Linux. It should run on other Unix-like systems as well.

Usage

Run changelog help to see the general help, and changelog help [show|add] for more detailed help.

Add a log entry

Only root can create entries. When using sudo/doas, changelog tries to guess the original user.

changelog add doesn't return any output and exits with code 0 if add was successful.

Standard add:

$ sudo changelog add "The new changelog entry to add."

Add as another user:

$ sudo changelog add -u foobar "The new changelog entry to add."

Add from stdin:

$ sudo echo "The new changelog entry to add." | changelog add -s

View the changelog

View the 5 (default) previous entries:

$ changelog view
2018-12-31T15:08  arclab  And another one with multiple lines.
                          Like this.
                          Because why not.
2018-12-31T15:07  arclab  A long sentence that will wrap around depending on the terminal width
                          while still maintaining alignment with the column. Isn't it nice?
2018-12-31T15:06  àrçláb  An example UTF-8 message - ℓεετ sρεακ αηλοηε?
2018-12-31T15:05  arclab  This is a simple sample message.

View entries formated to a width of 80 columns:

$ changelog view -w 80
2018-12-31T15:08  arclab  And another one with multiple lines.
                          Like this.
                          Because why not.
2018-12-31T15:07  arclab  A long sentence that will wrap around depending on
                          the terminal width while still maintaining alignment
                          with the column. Isn't it nice?
2018-12-31T15:06  àrçláb  An example UTF-8 message - ℓεετ sρεακ αηλοηε?
2018-12-31T15:05  arclab  This is a simple sample message.

View only the last 10 entries:

$ changelog view -l 10

View the entries done by a specific user:

$ changelog view -u foobar

Options can be combined.

Installation

Building changelog requires the Go and GCC compilers and Git.

On non-GNU systems such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD, you also require GNU Make. For those, replace make by gmake in the commands below.

Get it:

$ go get -u github.com/arclabch/changelog

As go get will build it by itself without following the makefile, you should also delete the compiled version ($GOPATH/bin/changelog) to avoid runtime issues.

Compile it:

You must go to the source folder and checkout the version you want to compile. If $GOPATH is not defined, try ~/go.

$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/arclabch/changelog
$ git checkout release/1.0.3
$ make

Install it (as root):

$ sudo make install

Remove it (as root):

$ sudo make uninstall

(or simply delete rm /usr[/local]/bin/changelog.)

Optional: delete /var/log/changelog.db to remove its database.

What's New

1.0.3

Bug fix: minimum terminal width calculation.
Bug fix: build timestamp format correction.
Documentation: Tested on NetBSD.

1.0.2

Bug fix: minimum terminal width could be miscalculated.
Documentation: Added example outputs to this readme.

1.0.1

Bug fix: error on make install.

1.0.0

Initial release.

License

MIT. See LICENSE file.