riot-web has a changelog.gz but has only single comment always -

[shirishag75]

In Debian and debian-derived derivatives there is a custom to provide at the very least two changelogs, a changelog.Debian.gz and changelog.gz . The changelog.gz provides info. about all upstream changes. This is what changelog.gz of riot tells all the time in every release.

─[shirish@debian] - [/usr/share/doc/riot-web] - [10110]
└─[$] zless changelog.gz   

riot-web (0.12.2) whatever; urgency=medium

  * Package created with FPM.

 -- [email protected]  Thu, 24 Aug 2017 15:42:03 +0100
changelog.gz (END) 

wherein it should provide upstream changes from https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md

The changelog.Debian.gz is there for changes done in improvement of packaging.

An example of the same -

┌─[shirish@debian] - [/usr/share/doc/weechat] - [10124]
└─[$] ls                                                                                                                           
changelog.Debian.gz  changelog.gz  copyright  NEWS.Debian.gz

┌─[shirish@debian] - [/usr/share/doc/weechat] - [10125]
└─[$] zless changelog.Debian.gz 

weechat (1.9-1) unstable; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release
  * Remove useless weechat-dbg binary package
  * Bump Standards-Version to 4.0.0

 -- Emmanuel Bouthenot <[email protected]>  Tue, 04 Jul 2017 13:29:55 +0200

weechat (1.8-1) unstable; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release
  * Remove usless patches (backports from upstream)

 -- Emmanuel Bouthenot <[email protected]>  Tue, 16 May 2017 14:53:07 +0200

weechat (1.7-3) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Add a patch to fix CVE-2017-8073 which allows a remote crash by
    sending a filename via DCC to the IRC plugin (Closes: #861121)

 -- Emmanuel Bouthenot <[email protected]>  Tue, 25 Apr 2017 10:46:10 +0200


= WeeChat ChangeLog
:author: Sébastien Helleu
:email: [email protected]
:lang: en
:toc: left
:docinfo1:


This document lists all changes for each version
(the latest formatted version of this document can be found
https://weechat.org/files/changelog/ChangeLog-devel.html[here]).

For a list of important changes that require manual action, please look at
https://weechat.org/files/releasenotes/ReleaseNotes-devel.html[release notes]
(file _ReleaseNotes.adoc_ in sources).


[[v1.9]]
== Version 1.9 (2017-06-25)

New features::

  * api: allow update of variables "scroll_x" and "scroll_y" in bar_window with function hdata_update
  * api: add functions config_option_get_string() and hdata_compare()
  * buflist: add option buflist.look.auto_scroll (issue #332)
  * buflist: add keys kbd:[F1]/kbd:[F2], kbd:[Alt+F1]/kbd:[Alt+F2] to scroll the buflist bar

Improvements::

  * core: improve speed of nicklist bar item callback
  * core: allow index for hdata arrays in evaluation of expressions
  * buflist: display a warning when the script "buffers.pl" is loaded
  * buflist: add support of char "~" in option buflist.look.sort for case insensitive comparison
  * buflist: add variable `${format_name}` in bar item evaluation and option buflist.format.name (issue #1020)
  * buflist: add variables `${current_buffer}` and `${merged}` (booleans "0" / "1") in bar item evaluation
  * relay: add option "start" in command /relay
  * trigger: add "irc_server" and "irc_channel" pointers in data for IRC signal/modifier hooks

Bug fixes::

  * core: fix bind of keys with space key, like kbd:[Alt+Space] (bug #32133)
  * core: fix infinite loop when the terminal is closed on the secure password prompt (issue #1010)
  * buflist: fix long mouse gestures
  * buflist: fix slow switch of buffer when there are a lot of buffers opened (issue #998)
 * buflist: fix slow switch of buffer when there are a lot of buffers opened (issue #998)
  * buflist: add option "bar" in command /buflist, do not automatically add the "buflist" bar when the option buflist.look.enabled is off (issue #994)
  * buflist: fix crash on drag & drop of buffers
  * irc: don't reset nick properties (prefixes/away/account/realname) on /names when the nick already exists (issue #1019)
  * irc: fix memory leak in case of error in "ecdsa-nist256p-challenge" SASL mechanism
  * relay: rebind on address after option relay.network.bind_address is changed
  * relay: fix parsing of CAP command arguments in irc protocol (issue #995)

As can be seen changelog.gz is and can be generated by simply using either git log or git shortlog and sharing the contents thereafter.

In the above irc client, there is also NEWS.Debian.gz which is usually told/shared when something important happens for e.g. internal changes to how the client saves data is changed which makes it incompatible with early versions of the same client. Usually there is a version which provides the transition path though.

Hoping to see this happen soonish so there is more sensible changelogs.

[uhoreg]

The deb packages are built using electron-builder, which doesn't seem to include a way to set the changelog. So unless electron-builder adds some way of setting that, probably the only way to get this is to unpack the built deb file, add the changelogs, and then repack it.

[lampholder]

Would be nice to have, but due to filddliness described by @uhoreg I'd be surprised if this happened soon sadly

[deatharse]

Will the electron-builder use a file located in debian/CHANGELOG (the normal location for .deb package git repos)? If so you may be able to use gbp dch first to generate it from the git commit messages. Could also be relevant to #6613 if its possible.

[Mikaela]

That whatever looks especially professional always when apt-listchanges shows me Riot changelogs 😄

[shirishag75]

I think she meant that apt-listchanges are far more professional than what Riot changelogs are because each release it outputs the same line, no difference -

/usr/share/doc/riot-web$ zcat changelog.gz 
riot-web (0.17.0) whatever; urgency=medium

  * Package created with FPM.

 -- [email protected]  Tue, 16 Oct 2018 11:17:39 +0100

That just tells when riot-web was packaged for Debian but tells nothing either what changed either in the matrix protocol or in the riot packaging or anything else for that matter. The changelog as it exists right now is totally meaningless.

I guess the changelog is there because debian-policy says there needs to be a changelog and that's it. It follows the literal but not the spirit behind having that info. in debian-policy.