Should we start mandating that Pull Requests update the CHANGELOG?

[tomchristie]

So, I've been thinking that we might have reached a point in our workflow where we'd like pull requests to also include a relevant CHANGELOG entry.

We're pretty low churn at this point, plus GitHub's UI now makes it super easy to resolve the sort of simple merge conflicts that CHANGELOG-entries-in-PRs often introduce.

If we forced pull requests to include CHANGELOG entries, then...

• We're enforcing that all behaviour-changing pull requests get a nicely worded single-line motivation description.
• Our release process & reviewing potential breaking changes etc. becomes easier.
• History-wise the CHANGELOG entries are nicely associated alongside with the same PR that introduced them.

(Note that refactors and docs changes don't require CHANGELOG entries, since they're not behavioural changes.)

[florimondmanca]

Personally don't mind experimenting with that for a bit. :-)

Right now maintainers have to go through the git history and decide which PRs should go into a release and which shouldn't. I don't think the cumbersomeness of it is a problem, but it certainly is a bit risky — might miss important PRs, not see what's breaking and what's not, etc.

How would we enforce this new policy?

• Have maintainers "remember" about it? (Seems unsustainable?)
• Add a PR template with a "This PR contains any appropriate changelog entry" checkbox? Related Discussion-first workflows? #1493 (reply in thread)

How do we feel about something like Reno?

[tomchristie]

Re: Reno - As always I'm a super-nope on extra tooling, so...

A pull request template makes a lot of sense yup. We could do with one anyways. (And start pushing folks towards discussions as a typical pre-cursor to issues/PRs)

[florimondmanca]

super-nope on extra tooling

😆

Yes, a PR template has become definitely needed for HTTPX (and HTTPCore?).

[StephenBrown2]

Reno might be good, but I think something like towncrier would be simpler, as it only requires PRs to include a single file in a directory describing the change. Any changelog tooling would only need to live in GH Actions in my opinion. However, if you're against more dependency tooling, we could copy what Pydantic has done with a single "make_history" file and again, just a single file for contributers to add.

PR Template++ regardless though.