Changelog changes

[BethGriggs]

In the last release meeting (https://github.com/nodejs/Release/issues/564) we discussed altering the layout of our changelogs.

• Ideal if the author could write the notable change section, but unlikely to happen based on the usage of the notable change label.
• Suggestion to create a Google doc to collaborate on notable changes.
• Suggestion to separate out test changes, and some doc changes to make the changelog more readable for end users.
• Remove labels from individual commits that are not major or minor.
• Suggestion to add semverness to the commit message.

[sam-github]

Suggestion to add semverness to the commit message.

Reasonably often we change our mind on the semverity of a commit after it has landed. In theory, that shouldn't happen, but if semverity was hard-coded into the commit message it becomes immutable.

Is making semverity immutable what is being considered, or am I reading too much into that bullet point?

[targos]

@sam-github the goal is not to make it immutable. It's to tie semverity to individual commits rather than to entire pull requests. Often a pull request adds a feature or a breaking change in one commit, but other commits do not deserve to be marked minor or major in the changelog (e.g. test changes, or many of the commits that we do in V8 upgrades)

[sam-github]

I understand its not the goal to make it immutable, but it would be a side-effect.

I agree that having semverity associated with entire PRs instead of individual commits also has problems.

Its too bad git notes x don't have better support in git and GitHub, they would be ideal for recording this kind of occaisonally mutable metadata.