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### 12.5 Working with global ChangeLog file

A global ChangeLog file contains revision logs for all files in a directory and is named `ChangeLog`. The format for such a file is:

            ISO-DATE  name  <e-mail>

            <HT>* filename[, filename]:
            <HT>revision history

where:

ISO-DATE
  A date with the ISO format YYYY-MM-DD
name
  A name, generally the developer name
<e-mail>
  The e-mail address of the developer surrounded with '<' and '>' characters.
HT
  Horizontal tabulation (or 8 spaces)

The name and <e-mail> items can be entered automatically by setting the GPS_CHANGELOG_USER environment variable. Note that there is two spaces between the name and the <e-mail>.

         On sh shell:

            export GPS_CHANGELOG_USER="John Doe  <john.doe@home.com>"

         On Windows shell:
            set GPS_CHANGELOG_USER="John Doe  <john.doe@home.com>"

Using the menu entry Edit global ChangeLog will open the file `ChangeLog` in the directory where the current selected file is and create the corresponding `ChangeLog` entry. This means that the ISO date and filename headers will be created if not yet present. You will have to enter your name and e-mail address.

This `ChangeLog` file serve as a repository for revision logs, when ready to check-in a file use the standard Edit revision log menu command. This will open the standard revision log buffer with the content filled from the global `ChangeLog` file.