gitchangelog creates a changelog from git log history using multiple template engines and a config file. Output can be either reStructuredText or MarkDown, with the latter format as default for this action (mainly for generating GitHub release pages).

By default this action will ues the gitchangelog.rc.github.release config file installed by the gitchangelog package.

Create a .yml file under .github/workflows with the following contents.

name: gitchangelog
on: [push]

jobs:
  release:
    name: gitchangelog-action
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0

      - name: gitchangelog action step
        uses: sarnold/gitchangelog-action@master
        with:
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}

name: gitchangelog
on:
  push:
    # trigger a release on any tag push
    tags:
      - '*'

jobs:
  build:
    # build stuff here to create release artifacts if needed

  release:
    name: gitchangelog with gh-release action
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Get version
        id: get_version
        run: |
          echo "VERSION=${GITHUB_REF/refs\/tags\//}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
          echo ${{ VERSION }}

      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0

      - name: Generate changes file
        uses: sarnold/gitchangelog-action@master
        with:
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}

      - name: Create release
        uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v1
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        with:
          tag_name: ${{ env.VERSION }}
          name: Release ${{ env.VERSION }}
          body_path: CHANGES.md
          draft: true
          prerelease: false

• target_branch will not create a new branch (you must create and push the branch before enabling this option)

Please refer to the gitchangelog readme doument for further details.

This action runs in a Docker container and requires the Ubuntu CI runner. In your workflow job configuration, you should set the runs-on property to ubuntu-latest:

jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

The gitchangelog tool itself is built and tested in github CI using Linux, Macos, and Windows, so you can always generate output on your local machine as needed.