Couldn't agree more. It's been heartbreaking to see the spread of those rote changelog entries on iOS specifically.
Although, meanwhile, large companies like Apple and Google have started including surprisingly high-level and compelling release notes or changelogs to end-users in things like Chrome and Keynote.
Smaller shops like Transit, Halide, Darkroom, and many others are going the opposite direction of Twitter and Facebook by offering very detailed and compelling (although sometimes a little too over the top) changelogs for their major releases.
One thing I wish people did more, and I feel like I should carve out a section about this on Keep a Changelog: explain exactly what bugs were fixed. I know discrete updaters are becoming more rare with auto-updates, but seeing a specific bug that affected you specifically squashed in a release is perhaps one of the greatest values of changelogs, especially in the case of open source software but also with closed source apps.
I wish. It's rampant on Android, too; of my recently updated apps right now, about half of them have release notes on the order of "bug fixes and performance enhancements". Even Google does it on their big-name apps!
I found that the changelogs on Android have never been that high quality to begin with. This is probably because from a very early stage (version 3.3.11), the Android Market automatically updated apps.
If you care that much about a specific bug, why not file or follow the relevant issue ?
It shows maintainers which are the real issues affecting people, allows two-way communication about the bug, and keeps the changelog clean.
Nodejs is an example of a project that seems to mention every single fixed bug in their changelog, making them so long that I'll probably miss the things that really matter while skimming over them - especially when jumping ahead a few versions.
> It shows maintainers which are the real issues affecting people
I disagree. Sure, it's a signal, but it's quite distorted.
Suppose you have an issue that affects a lot of people, but has a simple workaround. You may not see this issue since no one bothers to file a bug. If in doubt, I'd prefer to fix a papercut that affects 50% of my users vs. a catastrophic show-stopper bug that affects 0.01% of them.
Although, meanwhile, large companies like Apple and Google have started including surprisingly high-level and compelling release notes or changelogs to end-users in things like Chrome and Keynote.
Smaller shops like Transit, Halide, Darkroom, and many others are going the opposite direction of Twitter and Facebook by offering very detailed and compelling (although sometimes a little too over the top) changelogs for their major releases.
One thing I wish people did more, and I feel like I should carve out a section about this on Keep a Changelog: explain exactly what bugs were fixed. I know discrete updaters are becoming more rare with auto-updates, but seeing a specific bug that affected you specifically squashed in a release is perhaps one of the greatest values of changelogs, especially in the case of open source software but also with closed source apps.