12.5 Working with global ChangeLog file

A global ChangeLog file contains revision logs for all files in a directory and is named ChangeLog. The format for such a file is:

        ISO-DATE  name  <e-mail>
     
        <HT>* filename[, filename]:
        <HT>revision history

where:

ISO-DATE

A date with the ISO format YYYY-MM-DD

name

A name, generally the developer name

<e-mail>

The e-mail address of the developer surrounded with '<' and '>' characters.

HT

Horizontal tabulation (or 8 spaces)

The name and <e-mail> items can be entered automatically by setting the GPS_CHANGELOG_USER environment variable. Note that there is two spaces between the name and the <e-mail>.

     On sh shell:
     
        export GPS_CHANGELOG_USER="John Doe  <john.doe@home.com>"
     
     On Windows shell:
        set GPS_CHANGELOG_USER="John Doe  <john.doe@home.com>"

Using the menu entry Edit global ChangeLog will open the file ChangeLog in the directory where the current selected file is and create the corresponding ChangeLog entry. This means that the ISO date and filename headers will be created if not yet present. You will have to enter your name and e-mail address.

This ChangeLog file serve as a repository for revision logs, when ready to check-in a file use the standard Edit revision log menu command. This will open the standard revision log buffer with the content filled from the global ChangeLog file.