Project-changelog NPM

project-changelog

Command line tool for generating a changelog from git tags and commit history.

Installation

npm install -g project-changelog

Usage

Simply run project-changelog in the root folder of a git repository. git log is run behind the scenes in order to parse the commit history.

Usage: project-changelog [options]

Options:

  -o, --output [file]                 # output file, default: CHANGELOG.md
  -t, --template [template]           # specify template to use [compact, keepachangelog, json], default: compact
  -r, --remote [remote]               # specify git remote to use for links, default: origin
  -p, --package                       # use version from package.json as latest release
  -v, --latest-version [version]      # use specified version as latest release
  -u, --unreleased                    # include section for unreleased changes
  -l, --commit-limit [count]          # number of commits to display per release, default: 3
  -i, --issue-url [url]               # override url for issues, use {id} for issue id
      --issue-pattern [regex]         # override regex pattern for issues in commit messages
      --ignore-commit-pattern [regex] # pattern to ignore when parsing commits
      --starting-commit [hash]        # starting commit to use for changelog generation
      --tag-prefix [prefix]           # prefix used in version tags, default: v
  -V, --version                       # output the version number
  -h, --help                          # output usage information


# Write log to CHANGELOG.md in current directory
project-changelog

# Write log to HISTORY.md
project-changelog --output HISTORY.md

# Write log using keepachangelog template
project-changelog --template keepachangelog

# Write log using custom handlebars template in current directory
project-changelog --template my-custom-template.hbs

# Change rendered commit limit to 5
project-changelog --commit-limit 5

# Disable the commit limit, rendering all commits
project-changelog --commit-limit false

By default, changelogs will link to the appropriate pages for commits, issues and merge requests based on the origin remote of your repo. GitHub, BitBucket and GitLab are all supported. If you close issues using keywords but refer to issues outside of your repository, you can use --issue-url to link somewhere else:

# Link all issues to redmine
project-changelog --issue-url https://www.redmine.org/issues/{id}

Use --tag-prefix [prefix] if you prefix your version tags with a certain string:

# When all versions are tagged like my-package/1.2.3
project-changelog --tag-prefix my-package/

You can also set any option in package.json under the project-changelog key, using camelCase options:

{
  "name": "my-awesome-package",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "scripts": {
    // ...
  },
  "project-changelog": {
    "output": "HISTORY.md",
    "template": "keepachangelog",
    "unreleased": true,
    "commitLimit": false
  }
}

Requirements

project-changelog is designed to be as flexible as possible, providing a clear changelog for any project. The only absolute requirement is that all versions are tagged using semver tag names. This happens by default when using npm version.

There are some less strict requirements to improve your changelog:

Close issues using keywords
Merge pull requests using the standard merge commit message for your platform

What you might do if you’re clever

Install project-changelog to dev dependencies:

npm install project-changelog --save-dev
# or
yarn add project-changelog --dev

Add project-changelog -p && git add CHANGELOG.md to the version scripts in your package.json:

{
  "name": "my-awesome-package",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "devDependencies": {
    "project-changelog": "*"
  },
  "scripts": {
    "version": "project-changelog -p && git add CHANGELOG.md"
  }
}

Using -p or --package uses the version from package.json as the latest release, so that all commits between the previous release and now become part of that release. Essentially anything that would normally be parsed as Unreleased will now come under the version from package.json

Now every time you run npm version, the changelog will automatically update and be part of the version commit.

Custom templates

If you aren’t happy with the default templates or want to tweak something, you can point to a handlebars template in your local repo. Check out the existing templates to see what is possible.

Save changelog-template.hbs somewhere in your repo:

### Changelog

My custom changelog template. Don’t worry about indentation here; it is automatically removed from the output.

{{#each releases}}
  Every release has a {{title}} and a {{href}} you can use to link to the commit diff.
  It also has an {{isoDate}} and a {{niceDate}} you might want to use.
  {{#each merges}}
    - A merge has a {{message}}, an {{id}} and a {{href}} to the PR.
  {{/each}}
  {{#each fixes}}
    - Each fix has a {{commit}} with a {{commit.subject}}, an {{id}} and a {{href}} to the fixed issue.
  {{/each}}
  {{#each commits}}
    - Commits have a {{shorthash}}, a {{subject}} and a {{href}}, amongst other things.
  {{/each}}
{{/each}}

Then just use --template to point to your template:

project-changelog --template changelog-template.hbs

To see exactly what data is passed in to the templates, you can generate a JSON version of the changelog:

project-changelog --template json --output changelog-data.json

Custom issue patterns

By default, project-changelog will parse GitHub-style issue fixes in your commit messages. If you use Jira or an alternative pattern in your commits to reference issues, you can pass in a custom regular expression to --issue-pattern along with --issue-url:

# Parse Jira-style issues in your commit messages, like PROJECT-418
project-changelog --issue-pattern [A-Z]+-\d+ --issue-url https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/{id}

Or, in your package.json:

{
  "name": "my-awesome-package",
  "project-changelog": {
    "issueUrl": "https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/",
    "issuePattern": "[A-Z]+-\d+"
  }
}

If you use a certain pattern before or after the issue number, like fixes {id}, just use a capturing group:

# "This commit fixes ISSUE-123" will now parse ISSUE-123 as an issue fix
project-changelog --issue-pattern "[Ff]ixes ([A-Z]+-\d+)"

Migrating to `1.x`

If you are upgrading from 0.x, the same options are still supported out of the box. Nothing will break, but your changelog may look slightly different:

The default template is now compact
If you still want to use the keepachangelog format, use --template keepachangelog
Templates now use - instead of * for lists
Up to 3 commits are now shown per release by default, use --commit-limit to change this
Unreleased changes are no longer listed by default, use --unreleased to include them
GitLab and BitBucket are now fully supported

If anything isn’t working correctly, open an issue.

FAQ

What’s a changelog?

See keepachangelog.com.

What does this do?

The command parses your git commit history and generates a changelog based on tagged versions, merged pull requests and closed issues. See a simple example in this very repo.

Why do I need it?

Because keeping a changelog can be tedious and difficult to get right. If you don’t have the patience for a hand-crafted, bespoke changelog then this makes keeping one rather easy. It also can be automated if you’re feeling extra lazy.