An Android Library to display a Change Log grouped by version(/tags)

This library provides an easy way to display a change log in your app. Without take care to VersionCode is necessary when you auto generate the VersionCode

A: Usage of a XML

1. Create the master change log in res/xml/changelog_master.xml. Formatted like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<changelog>
    <release version="1.1" versioncode="11" >
        <change>Totally new and shiny version</change>
    </release>
    <release version="1.0" versioncode="10" >
        <change>Fixed: A bug fix</change>
        <change>Some other changes I can't quite remember</change>
    </release>
    <release version="0.1" versioncode="1">
        <change>First release</change>
    </release>
</changelog>

2. Create translations of this changelog_master.xml file in files named changelog.xml under language-specific versions of res/xml/, e.g. res/xml-de/changelog.xml.

B: Usage git changelog

To generate a git changelog, grouped by tag you can run getTagGroupedGitlog from git submodule buildSrc/src/main/kotlin/info/git/versionHelper This will automatic generate a changelog based on git history, grouped by tags.

afterEvaluate {
    tasks.named("generateReleaseResources") {
        doLast {
            getTagGroupedGitlog(
                filter = "RELEASE", // optional, only include tags with "RELEASE" in their name
                filename = "app/src/main/res/raw/gitlog.json"
            )
        }
    }
}

or by shell script

./generateTagGroupedGitlog.sh > app/src/main/res/raw/gitlog.json

This will show it similar to the XML

Common usage

1. Display the change log dialog by putting the following code in your activity's onCreate() method:

val changelog = ChangeLog(this)
if (changelog.isFirstRun()) {
    changelog.getLogDialog().show()
}

Include the library

The easiest way to add ChangeLog to your project is via Gradle. Just add the following lines to your build.gradle:

dependencies {
    implementation("com.github.AppDevNext:ChangeLog:$latestVersion")
}

To tell Gradle where to find the library, make sure build.gradle also contains this:

allprojects {
    repositories {
        maven { url = uri("https://jitpack.io") }
    }
}

Customize labels

In order to change the labels of the dialog add the following items to your strings.xml:

  <string name="changelog_full_title">Change Log</string>
  <string name="changelog_title">What\'s New</string>
  <string name="changelog_ok_button">OK</string>
  <string name="changelog_show_full">More…</string>

License

Copyright (C) 2012-2025 AppDevNext and contributors

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.