moralcode / logchange

a simple interactive bash script to assist with recording information about major changes made to your system for easier reinstalls and searching of repeat issues and their solutions.

logchange

a simple interactive bash script to assist with recording information about major changes made to your system for easier reinstalls and searching of repeat issues and their solutions.

Usage

Logging a change

To use this script to log a new change, type logchange into your terminal to activate the script.

Once activated, the script will interactively ask you a series of simple questions:

Question	Expected Input	Purpose
Is this a [s]ystem change or a [U]ser change?	s, u or enter to accept the default of U (case insensitive)	This records whether this change is user-level (i.e. home-folder configs) or system level (i.1. /etc/ configs, sudo apt install, etc.)
What piece of software does this change affect? (i.e. Firefox)	Free Response, defaults to the empty string	Provides a place to record whether this affects a particular piece of software
What/Where/Why?	Free Response, defaults to the empty string	provides a place to explain the problem being solved and include potential keywords for later searching
Is there a link to go with this change?	Free Response, defaults to the empty string	Provides a place to include a link to stackoverflow or any site to record where you found the solution to the problem in case its needed later

Log file format

Your answers to the above questions will be appended to the changelog file in one of the following formats:

System: [D System] M <L>

User: [D User] { A }: M <L>

where the capital letters serve as placeholders for:

• D - the datetime at which this entry was made
• A - the name of the affected application as entered
• M - the message explaining the issue as entered
• L - the link provided (if any)

Help Text

logchange.sh [[-h|--help]|[--oops|--undo]|[ --show|--list]|--open] -- a simple interactive bash script to assist with recording information about major changes made to your system.

where:
    -h|--help  show this help text
    --oops|--undo  removes the last line added to the changelog after a confirmation prompt
    --show|--list  output the contents of the changelog file using the cat utility
    --open  open the changelog file in the kate text editor

Setup

To set up this script, place the logchange.sh script somewhere on your system where the path is not likely to change. Then, in your favorite startup location of choice (maybe .profile is a safe default? not sure which one is best for what), paste the following lines and edit as appropriate (none have trailing slashes):

export CHANGELOG_DIR="path/to/where/you/want/the/changelog/file"
alias logchange=/path/to/logchange.sh
alias changelog='logchange --show'