changelog format

[Kevin Kofler]

Björn Persson wrote:
> I gather I'm expected to write the changelog in a spec file by hand. How
> strict are the requirements on the format of changelog entries? Are they
> meant to be machine-readable? Is the format specified anywhere? The
> packaging guidelines document contains four examples. Examples are good
> but they're no replacement for a specification.

The format is fairly straightforward:

* first line (elements separated by spaces):
  - asterisk
  - date in Wkd Mth dd yyyy format (e.g. Mon Apr 21 2009)
    (if the day is just 1 digit, you can write any of "1", " 1" or "01")
  - your name
  - your e-mail address between angle brackets ('<' and '>')
  - optionally a dash
  - the EVR (Epoch-Version-Release) of the package, without the disttag,
    e.g. 3.5.10-1 for 3.5.10-1.fc11, 3.5.10-1.1 for 3.5.10-1.fc11.1,
         6:4.2.2-1 if the package has Epoch 6 (the Epoch is specified only
         if present and you use a ':' between Epoch and Version)
* any other lines (elements separated by spaces):
  - dash (plain ASCII dash, please don't use some strange UTF-8 character)
  - text describing your change
  - if your change doesn't fit in one line, start a new line and indent it
    with 2 spaces, so it is aligned with the text above (which has a dash
    and a space)
  - bugs should be referenced as (#666666) (or, if there's any chance of
    confusion, (rh#666666)) for Fedora bugs and as (foo#666666), where foo
    is the relevant bug tracker (e.g. kde, sf, fdo etc.), for upstream bugs

        Kevin Kofler