Please accept CHANGELOG.md name

[fedelibre]

Describe the bug

Please accept CHANGELOG.md name.
The .md extensions allows a nice rendering on GitHub and similar websites.

It is also a recommended name in keepachangelog.com spec.

Steps to reproduce

On Linux run briefcase build in a project which has CHANGELOG.md (instead of CHANGELOG) in the project root directory.
You'll get the following error:

Installing license... done
Installing changelog... errored

Your project does not contain a CHANGELOG file.

Create a file named `CHANGELOG` in the same directory as your `pyproject.toml`
with details about the release.

and the build will stop.

Expected behavior

The build should find CHANGELOG.md and complete successfully.

My current workaround is copying/symlinking the expected name, but I'd rather avoid it.

Thanks for considering this.

Screenshots

No response

Environment

• Operating System: Linux (Fedora 41)
• Python version: 3.13.1
• Software versions:
  • Briefcase: 0.3.20

Logs

No response

Additional context

No response

[freakboy3742]

The Changelog is used for both the RPM and PKG.ZIP formats; in the RPM case, the file just needs to be available for reading; for PKG.ZIP, the file is copied, but the filename can be configured. Since there's no hard-requirement for a file named CHANGELOG, it would make sense to support as many possible candidate filenames for changelog data.

The keepachangelog.com README also suggests HISTORY, NEWS and RELEASES as possible names; it would make sense to me support all those options, in .md, .rst, .txt and "bare no-extension" formats, and whichever one is found first get used.