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đź–– Keep it alive: We need more Collaborators to github-changelog-generator #727

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Changelog generation has never been so easy

Fully automated changelog generation - This gem generates a changelog file based on tags, issues and merged pull requests (and splits them into separate lists according to labels) from :octocat: GitHub Issue Tracker.

Since you don't have to fill your CHANGELOG.md manually now: just run the script, relax and take a cup of :coffee: before your next release! :tada:

What’s the point of a changelog?

To make it easier for users and contributors to see precisely what notable changes have been made between each release (or version) of the project.

Why should I care?

Because software tools are for people. "Changelogs make it easier for users and contributors to see precisely what notable changes have been made between each release (or version) of the project."

:arrow_right: https://keepachangelog.com

Installation

GitHub Changelog Generator is a Ruby program, distributed as a RubyGem. The Ruby language homepage has an Installation page.

Install the gem like:

$ gem install github_changelog_generator

Depending on your system, you may need to run the shell as an Administrator (Windows), or use sudo gem install github_changelog_generator (Linux).

Usage

Running with CLI:

   github_changelog_generator -u github_username -p github_project

Running with Docker

Using Docker is an alternative to installing Ruby and the gem.

Example invocation:

$ docker run -it --rm -v "$(pwd)":/usr/local/src/your-app ferrarimarco/github-changelog-generator

This generates a CHANGELOG.md, with pretty Markdown formatting.

Output example

1.2.5 (2015-01-15)

Full Changelog

Implemented enhancements:

Fixed bugs:

Merged pull requests:

Params

Print help for all command-line options to learn more details:

$ github_changelog_generator --help

For more details about params, read the Wiki page: Advanced changelog generation examples

Params File

In your project root, you can put a params file named .github_changelog_generator to override default params:

Example:

unreleased=false
future-release=5.0.0
since-tag=1.0.0

GitHub token

GitHub only allows 50 unauthenticated requests per hour.

Therefore, it's recommended to run this script with authentication by using a token.

Here's how:

You can set an environment variable by running the following command at the prompt, or by adding it to your shell profile (e.g., .env, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.zshrc, etc):

export CHANGELOG_GITHUB_TOKEN="«your-40-digit-github-token»"

So, if you get a message like this:

API rate limit exceeded for github_username.
See: https://developer.github.com/v3/#rate-limiting

It's time to create this token! (Or, wait an hour for GitHub to reset your unauthenticated request limit.)

Migrating from a manual changelog

Knowing how dedicated you are to your project, you probably haven't been waiting for github-changelog-generator to keep a changelog. But you probably don't want your project's open issues and PRs for all past features listed in your historic changelog, either.

That's where --base <your-manual-changelog.md> comes in handy! This option lets append your old manual changelog to the end of the generated entries.

If you have a HISTORY.md file in your project, it will automatically be picked as the static historical changelog and appended.

Rake task

You love rake? We do, too! So, we've made it even easier for you: we've provided a rake task library for your changelog generation.

Configure the task in your Rakefile:

require 'github_changelog_generator/task'

GitHubChangelogGenerator::RakeTask.new :changelog do |config|
  config.user = 'username'
  config.project = 'project-name'
  config.since_tag = '0.1.14'
  config.future_release = '0.2.0'
end

All command-line options can be passed to the rake task as config parameters. And since you're naming the rake task yourself, you can create as many as you want.

You can look for params names from the parser source code (#setup_parser). For example, to translate the bugs label to Portuguese, instead of setting config.bugs_label, you have to set config.bug_prefix, and so on.

Features and advantages of this project

Using the summary section feature

For each version, you can add a release summary with text, images, gif animations, etc, and show new features and notes clearly to the user. This is done using GitHub metadata.

Example: adding the release summary for v1.0.0:

  1. Create a new GitHub Issue
  2. In the Issue's Description field, add your release summary content
![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/12690315/45935880-006a8200-bfeb-11e8-958e-ff742ae66b96.png)

Hello, World! :tada:
  1. Set the Issue Label release-summary and add it to the GitHub Milestone v1.0.0
  2. Close the Issue and execute github-changelog-generator
  3. The result looks like this:

v1.0.0 (2014-11-07)

Full Changelog

image

Hello, World! :tada:

Implemented enhancements:

Alternatives

Here is a wikipage list of alternatives that I found. But none satisfied my requirements.

If you know other projects, feel free to edit this Wiki page!

Projects using this library

Here's a wikipage list of projects.

If you've used this project in a live app, please let me know! Nothing makes me happier than seeing someone else take my work and go wild with it.

If you are using github_changelog_generator to generate your project's changelog, or know of other projects using it, please add it to this list.

Am I missing some essential feature?

FAQ

GitHub Releases is a very good thing. And it's very good practice to maintain it. (Not a lot of people are using it yet!) :congratulations:

BTW: I would like to support GitHub Releases in next releases ;)

I'm not trying to compare the quality of handwritten and auto-generated logs. That said....

An auto-generated changelog really helps, even if you manually fill in the release notes!

For example:

When you find a closed bug, it is very useful to know which release fixed it. So that you can easily find the issue by # in CHANGELOG.md.

Ultimately, I think GitHub Releases are ideal for end-users. Meanwhile, CHANGELOG.md lives right in the repository, with its detailed list of changes, which is handy for developers. Finally, there's nothing wrong with using GitHub Releases alongside CHANGELOG.md in this combination.

GitHub limits the number of API requests you can make in an hour. You can make up to 5,000 requests per hour. For unauthenticated requests, the rate limit is only up to 60 requests per hour. Unauthenticated requests are associated with your IP address (not the user making requests).

If you're seeing this warning, please do the following:

  1. Make sure you're providing an OAuth token, so you're not making requests anonymously. Using an OAuth token increases your hourly request maximum from 60 to 5000.
  2. If you have a large repo with lots of issues/PRs, you can use --max-issues NUM to limit the number of issues that are pulled back. For example: --max-issues 1000

When your Ruby is old, and you don't want to upgrade, and you want to control which libraries you use, you can use Bundler.

In a Gemfile, perhaps in a non-deployed :development group, add this gem:

group :development do
  gem 'github_changelog_generator', require: false
end

Then you can keep back dependencies like rack, which currently is only compatible with Ruby >= 2.2.2. So, use an older version for your app by adding a line like this to the Gemfile:

gem 'rack', '~> 1.6'

This way, you can keep on using github_changelog_generator, even if you can't get the latest version of Ruby installed.

Windows: v1.14.0 introduced a bug where it attempts to create /tmp/github_changelog-logger.log... which isn't a valid path on Windows and thus fails

Workaround: Create a C:\tmp.

Contributing

We have collected notes on how to contribute to this project in CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

Github Changelog Generator is released under the MIT License.