@goodcity/release-notes NPM

Release Note Generator

This command line utility will generate release notes based on the commit messages

How it works

It will

Compare the live and master branches
Find JIRA ticket references in the commits
Fetch the JIRA ticket titles from JIRA
Generate a Markdown list of all the tickets that have been affected

The generator will try it's best to determine the name of the project based on any package.json file or the git repo url. That can be overriden using the --app-name <name> option

Advanced features

Generating a PDF

The --pdf option can be used to generate a pdf file with all the release notes in it

Copying to the clipboard

If the --clipboard option is present, the markdown will be copied to your clipboard

Emailing the release notes

If the --email-to option is present, it will email the notes using sendgrid. An api key is required

e.g --email-to "email@host.com,email2@host.com"

The subject of the mail can be overriden using --email-subject "Mail Subject"

Speficiying the commits to compare

By default, the generator will try to compare the origin/master branch to the origin/live branch.

That can be overriden to point to another branch or commit sha using the --head <head> and --base <base> options.

This is useful when hooking it up to github actions, the pull_request type provides variables such as ${{github.event.pull_request.head.sha}} which can be used.

Running the utility

npx @goodcity/release-notes

Configuring

The tool can be run without any configurations, but specific JIRA and SENDGRID integrations can be configured via the following environment variables :

Name	Default value	Description
SENDGRID_API_KEY	null	API Key used for mailing
JIRA_HOST	jira.crossroads.org.hk	The JIRA endpoint to connect to
JIRA_USERNAME	input request	The JIRA username
JIRA_PASSWORD	input request	The JIRA passworld

Options Overview

$> npx @goodcity/release-notes --help

Usage: @goodcity/release-notes [options]

Options:
  -V, --version              output the version number
  -p, --pdf                  ouputs to pdf
  -c, --clipboard            copies the markdown to your clipboard
  -h, --head <head>          The head ref or source branch (default: "origin/master")
  -b, --base <base>          The base ref or target branch (default: "origin/live")
  --email-to <email>         Recipients for the release notes
  --email-subject <subject>  Subject of the email
  --app-name <name>          Name of the app
  --jira-code <code>         Jira ticket code (default: "GCW")
  --unshallow                Unshallows a shallow repository before reading the commites
  --help                     display help for command

Github action sample

Example: This will trigger a release email when a branch is merged into the live branch

# This workflow will do a clean install of node dependencies, build the source code and run tests across different versions of node
# For more information see: https://help.github.com/actions/language-and-framework-guides/using-nodejs-with-github-actions

name: Forward release notes

on:
  pull_request:
    types: [closed]
    branches:
      - live

jobs:
  release-notes:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.event.pull_request.merged == true
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
    - name: Use Node.js 12.x
      uses: actions/setup-node@v1
      with:
        node-version: 12.x
    - name: Generate and email notes
      run: npx @goodcity/release-notes --email-to "some@email.com" --head ${{github.event.pull_request.head.sha}} --base ${{github.event.pull_request.base.sha}} --email-subject "🚀 My App Release 🚀" --app-name "My App"
      env:
        JIRA_USERNAME: ${{secrets.jira_username}}
        JIRA_PASSWORD: ${{secrets.jira_password}}
        SENDGRID_API_KEY: ${{secrets.sendgrid_api_key}}