Generate a changelog from git commits. This is meant to be used so that for every patch, minor, or major version, you update the changelog prior to running npm version
so that the git tag contains the commit that updated both the changelog and version.
You can either install it as a dev dependency to be referenced in your npm scripts, or you can install this module globally to be used for all of your repos on your local machine.
$ npm i generate-changelog -D # install it as a dev dependency
# OR
$ npm i generate-changelog -g # install it globally
To use this module, your commit messages have to be in this format:
type(category): description [flags]
Where type
is one of the following:
breaking
build
ci
chore
docs
feat
fix
other
perf
refactor
revert
style
test
Where flags
is an optional comma-separated list of one or more of the following (must be surrounded in square brackets):
breaking
: alterstype
to be a breaking change
And category
can be anything of your choice. If you use a type not found in the list (but it still follows the same format of the message), it'll be grouped under other
.
You can run this module as a CLI app that prepends the new logs to a file (recommended):
$ changelog -h
Usage: generate [options]
Generate a changelog from git commits.
Options:
-h, --help output usage information
-V, --version output the version number
-p, --patch create a patch changelog
-m, --minor create a minor changelog
-M, --major create a major changelog
-t, --tag <range> generate from specific tag or range (e.g. v1.2.3 or v1.2.3..v1.2.4)
-x, --exclude <types> exclude selected commit types (comma separated)
-f, --file [file] file to write to, defaults to ./CHANGELOG.md, use - for stdout
-u, --repo-url [url] specify the repo URL for commit links, defaults to checking the package.json
-a, --allow-unknown allow unknown commit types
It's possible to create a ./CHANGELOG.md
file for a specific commit range:
generate-changelog 420c945...2a83752
Git tags are supported too:
generate-changelog release/3.1.2822...release/3.1.2858
You can write a script that calls the generate
function and does whatever you want with the new logs:
var Changelog = require('generate-changelog');
var Fs = require('fs');
return Changelog.generate({ patch: true, repoUrl: 'https://github.com/lob/generate-changelog' })
.then(function (changelog) {
Fs.writeFileSync('./CHANGELOG.md', changelog);
});
The way that I would recommend using this module would be the way it's being used in this module: as npm scripts. You should install it as a dev dependency and then add the following to the scripts
object in your package.json
:
"release:major": "changelog -M && git add CHANGELOG.md && git commit -m 'updated CHANGELOG.md' && npm version major && git push origin && git push origin --tags",
"release:minor": "changelog -m && git add CHANGELOG.md && git commit -m 'updated CHANGELOG.md' && npm version minor && git push origin && git push origin --tags",
"release:patch": "changelog -p && git add CHANGELOG.md && git commit -m 'updated CHANGELOG.md' && npm version patch && git push origin && git push origin --tags",
You can run this module in a GitHub Actions workflow using the generate-changelog-action Action.
To run the test suite, just clone the repository and run the following:
$ npm i
$ npm test
To contribute, please see the CONTRIBUTING.md file.
This project is released under the MIT license, which can be found in LICENSE.txt
.