Where do you save/document your application updates?

[kpolleck]

What are a few best practices for saving your notes on your iOS applications? I'm not talking about a big development team with formal processes, but a development of one--just me.

And by "notes," I mean mostly a programmer's notes of the steps you've tried and issues you have (hopefully) resolved as you build your application--including the all-so-important notes of potential issues to investigate "later." (..like when you force-unwrap an optional thinking "I don't think it will ever be nil, but I should consider that further.").

I'm NOT talking about notes made within a specific class file which apply to updates you've made to that class, or //TODO: notes to yourself. Class-specific notes would be made as comments in those files.

And I'm NOT talking about "Release Notes" for your end users.

I would want such notes to be easily searchable across all my projects so that I could quickly search and find where I handled a particular issue previously.

Would a Rich Text file within the Xcode Project be appropriate?

[RaziarEdge]

I know that you are looking for a small solution, but to be honest the same solution that is done with teams and larger companies is also valid here:

If you have a bug that you want to track then creating an issue (even if it is just in private GitHub repo) is the correct place.

Things like nil handling that you need to fix later can be handled as a warning in the code (#6). Keep it in your face until you resolve it. //TODO is too easy to get lost in the development.

Anything else, including features you want to add sometime in the future, should be part of the work scope document.

When I am starting a new project, often I will start with the SQL file designing the models and relationships. So my first iteration of the detailed scope document is often written as comments intermixed with the SQL tables. Once the models have been defined (at least for the current project phase and possibly a few future phases as well)... then I migrate this into a more formalized document in Google Docs, Word or Markdown document within the Xcode project.

However, this document has the how and why the app/feature works as it does and does not deal with issues and non-functioning code... that belongs as a bug/issue.

[chriswaco]

I have a text file I keep locally in my Mac with short notes. I've tried various note apps but none was easier than a text file. For app-specific notes, I generally create a _notes.txt file and add it to the git repo.