editchanges

editchanges is a small shellscript that helps manage the changelog of a Debian host.

Features

• flexible choice of editors, honoring the local user's settings.
• rudimentary locking

• makes sure that the changelog starts with the system's current /etc/motd

• Positions the editor's insertion point on a newly created changelog entry after invocation
• dumps changelog diff to syslog after editor was called to allow traceability and transparency. This will also prod somebody skimming the syslog to a change that was made (probably helping her find the cause for a behavior change of the system).

Todo

• Add possiblity to give changelog entry on command line (like cvs commit -m) for automatic processing.