Look at existing work around generating changelogs

[flyingzumwalt]

FYI The use case for this captain-log generator overlaps with the experiments around generating Changelogs (see https://github.com/dignifiedquire/aegir/issues/30) If we settle on good conventions for formatting commit messages, we can use that format for both Changelogs and Captains logs.

[nicola]

Cool! I haven't seen that yet!

The way I see is this:

• change logs can be written by reading commit messages (updates and changes done to the code)
• captain logs can be written by reading the issues (comments and discussions on or open happening in the project, not necessarily in the code)

So, maybe they are still two different effort? (which of course must be aligned!)

---

cc @dignifiedquire

[flyingzumwalt]

This group certainly does thrive on intellectual synergy.

If you're generating captain's logs from issues instead of comments, you will be excited to hear about our work on generating Roadmaps from Issues and Milestones. See PR ipfs/pm#176 and the roadmap-generator that @haadcode wrote a few weeks ago. It's using the same raw materials that you're using for the Captain's Log but it's framing them as a Quarterly Roadmap instead of a weekly captain's log.

Actually, with the Roadmaps I was wondering how to handle the fact that we will want to re-generate them weekly in order to see where there's progress. If we do that, I think we will be able to keep projects aligned by spending part of of each Sprint Call looking at the Roadmap and the Milestones. But even then, you really do want that same info formatted as a Captain's log to tell the rest of the world what's up.

I'll need to think this through, but even though the Roadmap, Captain's Log, CHANGELOG and Status Board are all recycling the same info I think they're not redundant. I think each might satisfy a different set of important needs. However, that certainly is a lot of documents to generate from the same base information (Issues, commits and Milestones).

In order to figure out whether there really is redundancy I'd like to tease out an explanation of what each one of these artifacts is doing. I've already written up explanations for the Roadmap and Status Board in the new draft of the PM document (see PR https://github.com/ipfs/pm/pull/183) -- the relevant part starts at the Milestones heading and runs through the section on Status Boards. I'm curious how to connect the Captain's Log and the CHANGELOG with that narrative.

Or here's the concise explanation of Milestones, Roadmaps and Status Boards in the overview of the PM document:

In order to provide a clear timeline for each project, we associate Goals with 📘 Milestones which have either estimated dates of delivery or deadlines. Those Milestones are collected into a 🗺 Project Roadmap, which is where you go to answer questions about the trajectory, priorities, and timing of the project.

In order to provide a clear view of the current state of work, every project has a 📊 Status Board which shows where the Project's Goals lie in the Pipeline or flow from inception through to completion. The Status Board is where you go to answer questions about what is being worked on now, what is ready to be worked on, etc.

We also pull all of the Project Roadmaps together into a consolidated Organization Roadmap.

[nicola]

(tell me how to take this forward! Awesome job!)