Hi all, As I recall, the main reason for maintaining a manually curated changelog was to offer a clear, thoughtful summary of release changes – a task that automated tools traditionally struggled with.
With recent advancements in AI, we could consider revisiting this stance and exploring an AI-assisted workflow, as Yufei proposed. That said, I think we should consider these tradeoffs carefully before making such a decision: - Missing context: the most essential parts of our changelogs are the highlights and upgrade notes, e.g. the rolling-upgrade caveat for credentialVendingMechanism. Since details like this aren't captured in PR titles or code diffs, an LLM model can only include them if an author explicitly documented them somewhere. - Silent omissions: if an LLM accidentally omits a breaking change, the resulting output still appears plausible, making it difficult for a release manager to identify what's missing. - Non-deterministic output: because LLM-generated text isn't directly reproducible from the repository state, every execution produces a slightly different changelog, which could be an issue for official release votes. Given these points, requiring PR authors to submit changelog entries when relevant remains imho a valuable discipline. Moving to a changelog.d directory structure should effectively address the pain around merge conflicts and reduce contention on CHANGELOG.md. Thanks, Alex On Tue, Oct 6, 2026 at 8:18 PM Dmitri Bourlatchkov <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi All, > > When I originally proposed the CHANGELOG file [1], the idea was to help > with itemizing the changes at release time :) > > It was never meant to include an entry for every small PR, only for PRs > worth mentioning in release notes. > > Alex's idea of "/changelog.d" sounds interesting. I suppose if we name > those files according to to the date, we'll automatically get a sorted > change log for release notes. We could probably also use a pattern or > textual tags to identify breaking changes, fixes, etc. > > Re: conflict resolution via UI, I think a tool plus some PR discipline is > preferable to a manual process. > > [1] https://lists.apache.org/thread/qznf8toht1r7ml35lt4p8nwlk9op638v > > Cheers, > Dmitri. > > On Tue, Oct 6, 2026 at 1:35 PM Jean-Baptiste Onofré <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > To play devil's advocate: do we really need a CHANGELOG file? :) > > > > I agree that we need to inform users about breaking changes and user-facing > > updates. However, we could simply use a "breaking-change" label on GitHub > > PRs and automatically populate the Release Notes at release time, rather > > than manually maintaining a CHANGELOG. The remainder of a typical CHANGELOG > > is essentially just a git log, which most users do not read anyway. I have > > successfully used this approach across several ASF projects. > > > > Thoughts? > > > > Regards, > > JB > > > > > > On Tue, Oct 6, 2026 at 7:08 PM Ayush Saxena <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Hi Everyone, > > > +1 on trying to find some way around solving CHANGELOG conflicts. Some > > > numbers in case they help make the case: over the last 60 days, 75 of > > > 339 commits on main touched CHANGELOG.md — roughly one in four and a > > > half. Every one of those is a potential conflict with every other, and > > > none of them is a real logical conflict. > > > > > > On Yufei's two points: > > > > > > ASF headers — I don't think fragments need them. rat already has an > > > exclusion list in build.gradle.kts (the RatTask block around line 55), > > > and it already excludes a Markdown file on exactly these grounds: > > > .github/pull_request_template.md. Adding changelog.d/** is one line. > > > Worth double checking though — but they never ship in a release > > > artifact, since they're consumed and deleted before the RC is cut, so > > > I think ASF header isn't required. > > > > > > Multi-PR features — this gets easier rather than harder. Today a > > > follow-up has to edit shared lines in CHANGELOG.md; with fragments it > > > edits or deletes one file its own feature owns, so follow-ups stop > > > colliding with unrelated work. > > > > > > One thing worth settling in the PR: > > > > > > Naming. changelog.d/pr-1235.md has a chicken-and-egg problem: you > > > don't know the PR number until the PR exists, so the first push never > > > has the right name. Allowing a short slug > > > (changelog.d/ranger-implied-grants.md), or keying off the issue number > > > where one exists, avoids the extra round trip. towncrier's convention > > > is <issue>.<type>.md with a +<slug>.md escape hatch for changes with > > > no issue. > > > > > > Robert's point changes my view somewhat. If resolving in the UI > > > doesn't dismiss the approval, the per-conflict cost is much lower than > > > I assumed. The one cost it does leave is CI: that merge commit re-runs > > > the entire pipeline for a one-line docs change.This mostly should be > > > solvable, that we don't trigger the entire CI flow when the change is > > > only in the CHANGELOG. With that plus a line in the PR template about > > > resolving in the UI, I think the lighter option is a genuine > > > alternative to the fragment directory rather than just a stopgap. > > > > > > -Ayush > > > > > > On Tue, 6 Oct 2026 at 22:23, Robert Stupp <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > CHANGELOG.md entries are usually resolvable via the GH UI. > > > > > > > > I did that today and it only required removing three Git conflict > > marker > > > > lines in total. That ended in a "merge" commit generated by GH that > > > didn't > > > > even require another approval of the PR. > > > > > > > > On Tue, Oct 6, 2026 at 6:41 PM Yufei Gu <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > Hi Alex, > > > > > > > > > > Thanks for raising this point, it is definitely a pain point. > > > > > > > > > > To address it, I think we could create a file named after the PR > > > number, > > > > > such as changelog.d/pr-1235.md. > > > > > > > > > > A few overhead items and concerns to consider: > > > > > > > > > > 1. ASF Headers: New files will require ASF headers. While this is a > > > bit > > > > > verbose, it should be fine. > > > > > 2. Multi-PR Features: We may need to update the changelog when a > > > feature > > > > > is split across multiple small PRs. We could allow follow-up PRs to > > > modify > > > > > or even remove the changelog entry created by a previous PR. It > > should > > > be > > > > > fine as well. > > > > > > > > > > I'm open to other ideas as well. > > > > > > > > > > Yufei > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Tue, Oct 6, 2026 at 9:05 AM Alex Dutra <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > Hi all, > > > > > > > > > > > > Almost every PR that touches user-facing behavior adds an entry > > under > > > > > > "## [Unreleased]" in CHANGELOG.md. Since all of those PRs edit the > > > > > > same few lines, they regularly conflict with each other. > > Contributors > > > > > > and reviewers then spend time rebasing and re-resolving a file that > > > > > > has no real logical conflicts. > > > > > > > > > > > > I'd like to propose a process change that removes this problem: > > > > > > instead of editing CHANGELOG.md directly, each PR adds its own > > small > > > > > > file under a new changelog.d/ directory. Because two PRs never edit > > > > > > the same file, they can't conflict. At release time, a script > > > > > > assembles the fragments into CHANGELOG.md and deletes them. > > > > > > > > > > > > What do you think? If you like the idea, I can draft a PR and flesh > > > > > > out the details. > > > > > > > > > > > > Thanks, > > > > > > Alex > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
