Command Line Application that can automatically update changelog file of your project after each commit/pull request/tag/release
Table of contents:
- Why?
- When?
- How?
- Installation
- Contributing
- Documentation
- Integrations
- Integration Request
There are similar, more popular projects around, why this? Automation is designed to give project owner a bit more flexibility and control over the changelog generation process. If pull requests are properly described Automation will take that description, parse it and extract following types of changes from it:
- added
- changed
- fixed
- removed
- deprecated
- security
Those types are part of keep a changelog notation.
Pull Request Description by definition is easy to update/change, also once commits are merged which makes it really easy to get back to a specific PR when generating a changelog, fix it and get a better changelog output.
What if pull requests does not have expected description? Then Automation will fall back into commit messages but even here it will
first try to look for conventional commit notation and if that fail it will look for common prefixes
like Fix
, Added
, Removed
.
Still not convinced by keep a changelog theme? No problem, Automation is supporting also more classical approach, just use --theme=classic
option.
What if one would still prefer commit messages over pull requests? Don't worry, --only-commits
option is here for him, just like --only-pull-requests
is for the opposite camp.
Not sure if automated changelog generation is for you?
- Software with stable release cycle, following SemVer
- Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
Thos are two most popular use cases.
Releasing open source project you will probably look into --tag
option that will take a all changes between given and previous tag and generate changelog.
When working on a project that is released multiple times every day and does not really have a predictable release cycle you might want to store last deployed commit SHA hash and pass it later through --commit-end
option. Automation will be able then to generate changelog since last release for you.
Examples:
Generate full changelog for repository
docker run -t -e AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_TOKEN --rm aeonphp/automation changelog:generate:all aeon-php/calendar --skip-from="dependabot[bot]" --skip-from="aeon-automation"
Generate full changelog for repository
docker run -t -e AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_TOKEN --rm aeonphp/automation changelog:generate:all aeon-php/calendar --github-release-update --github-file-update-path=CHANGELOG.md --skip-from="dependabot[bot]" --skip-from="aeon-automation"
Generate unreleased changes for repository
docker run -t -e AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_TOKEN --rm aeonphp/automation changelog:generate aeon-php/calendar --skip-from="dependabot[bot]" --skip-from="aeon-automation"
Generate changelog for specific tag
docker run -t -e AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_TOKEN --rm aeonphp/automation changelog:generate aeon-php/calendar --tag=0.15.0 --skip-from="dependabot[bot]" --skip-from="aeon-automation"
In order to generate a changelog Automation takes 4 steps.
Currently, Automation takes the whole project history directly from GitHub but more sources are coming.
When generating a changelog, Automation is first trying to understand what is the scope of changes. By default, it takes head of the default branch and it looks for the latest tag (from a semantic versioning point of view). Of course, this can be overwritten by telling automation to start from a specific tag using --tag
option or even more precisely by providing start and end commit SHA, --commit-start
, --commit-end
.
There are 2 more options that could help to setup the right scope, --changed-after
and --changed-before
which also supports relative formats like --changed-after=noon
or --changed-after="-1 day"
When the scope is detected, Automation will fetch the history of changes from source. It all starts from commits, and it works pretty much as git log origin..HEAD
command. When commits are fetched, Automation pulls all Pull Requests since they also have valuable data about changes (this can be skipped using --only-commits
option).
Not all contributions are worth mentioning, sometimes you might want to exclude changes from bots. --skip-from
option makes possible to skip changes from given authors.
Automation follows the Keep a Changelog philosophy and it can recognize following types of changes:
- Added
- Changed
- Deprecated
- Removed
- Fixed
- Security
There are several strategies making this recognition possible:
They are applied in given order until first one parse changes source and properly detect all changes.
When all changes are detected and grouped by types Automation moves to the last step, changelog generation.
Automation supports following changelog formats:
markdown
html
Automation supports following themes:
keepachangelog
classic
All themes are supported by all formats.
This theme follows Keep a Changelog convention, changes are organized by type.
This theme does not organize changes in any particular way, each change is displayed as a separated line item ordered by change date.
Combined with --only-pull-requests
option will provide clean and organized classical list of changes taken from pull request titles.
Before you start, generate your own GitHub personal access token.
It can be provided as environment variable AUTOMATION_GH_TOKEN
or through CLI option --github-token
If Automation is not working as you expected, increase verbosity to see how it works under the hood. It can be done by providing one of following options:
-v
- normal-vv
- verbose-vvv
- debug
docker pull aeonphp/automation
docker run -t --rm aeonphp/automation --help
git clone [email protected]:aeon-php/automation.git
cd automation
composer install
bin/automation --help
TODO: Coming soon
Because Automation is using GitHub API to grab project history you can use it against any popular github projects.
automation changelog:generate organization/name -v
Looking for a way to contribute? Awesome ❤️ Below you can find few places to start with:
You are also more than welcome to open an issue if anything about this project bothers you.
aeon-automation
Usage:
command [options] [arguments]
Options:
-h, --help Display help for the given command. When no command is given display help for the list command
-q, --quiet Do not output any message
-V, --version Display this application version
--ansi Force ANSI output
--no-ansi Disable ANSI output
-n, --no-interaction Do not ask any interactive question
--configuration=CONFIGURATION Custom path to the automation.xml configuration file.
--cache-path=CACHE-PATH Path to root cache directory, taken from sys_get_tmp_dir() function or AEON_AUTOMATION_CACHE_DIR env variable [default: "/Users/norzechowicz/.automation"]
--github-token=GITHUB-TOKEN Github personal access token, generated here: https://github.com/settings/tokens By default taken from AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_TOKEN env variable
--github-enterprise-url=GITHUB-ENTERPRISE-URL Github enterprise URL, by default taken from AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_ENTERPRISE_URL env variable
-v|vv|vvv, --verbose Increase the verbosity of messages: 1 for normal output, 2 for more verbose output and 3 for debug
Available commands:
help Displays help for a command
list Lists commands
branch
branch:list List project branches
cache
cache:clear Clears all or specific caches.
changelog
changelog:generate Generate change log for a release.
changelog:generate:all Generate change log for all tags.
changelog:get Get project changelog.
changelog:release:unreleased Update changelog file by turning Unreleased section into the next release
milestone
milestone:create Create new milestone for project
milestone:list
pull-request
pull-request:description:check Check if pull request has changes in expected by Automation format.
pull-request:list
pull-request:template:show Display pull request template required by this tool to properly parse keepachangelog format
release
release:list List all project releases
tag
tag:list Display all tags following SemVer convention sorted from the latest to oldest
workflow
workflow:job:list List project Github actions jobs status from the latest workflow run
Description:
Generate change log for a release.
Usage:
changelog:generate [options] [--] <project>
Arguments:
project project name, for example aeon-php/calendar
Options:
--commit-start=COMMIT-START Optional commit sha from which changelog is generated . When not provided, default branch latest commit is taken
--commit-end=COMMIT-END Optional commit sha until which changelog is generated . When not provided, latest tag is taken
--changed-after=CHANGED-AFTER Ignore all changes after given date, relative date formats like "-1 day" are also supported
--changed-before=CHANGED-BEFORE Ignore all changes before given date, relative date formats like "-1 day" are also supported
--tag=TAG List only changes from given release
--tag-next=TAG-NEXT List only changes until given release
--tag-only-stable Check SemVer stability of all tags and remove all unstable
--release-name=RELEASE-NAME Name of the release when --tag option is not provided [default: "Unreleased"]
--only-commits Use only commits to generate changelog
--only-pull-requests Use only pull requests to generate changelog
--compare-reverse When comparing commits, revers the order and compare start to end, instead end to start.
--format=FORMAT How to format generated changelog, available formatters: "markdown", "html" [default: "markdown"]
--theme=THEME Theme of generated changelog: "keepachangelog", "classic" [default: "keepachangelog"]
--skip-from=SKIP-FROM Skip changes from given author|authors (multiple values allowed)
--github-release-update Update GitHub release description if you have right permissions and release exists
--github-file-update-path=GITHUB-FILE-UPDATE-PATH Update changelog file directly at GitHub by reading existing file content and changing related release section. For example: --github-file-update-path=CHANGELOG.md
--github-file-update-ref=GITHUB-FILE-UPDATE-REF The name of the commit/branch/tag from which to take file for --github-file-update-path=CHANGELOG.md option. Default: the repository’s default branch.
-h, --help Display help for the given command. When no command is given display help for the list command
-q, --quiet Do not output any message
-V, --version Display this application version
--ansi Force ANSI output
--no-ansi Disable ANSI output
-n, --no-interaction Do not ask any interactive question
--configuration=CONFIGURATION Custom path to the automation.xml configuration file.
--cache-path=CACHE-PATH Path to root cache directory, taken from sys_get_tmp_dir() function or AEON_AUTOMATION_CACHE_DIR env variable [default: "/Users/norzechowicz/.automation"]
--github-token=GITHUB-TOKEN Github personal access token, generated here: https://github.com/settings/tokens By default taken from AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_TOKEN env variable
--github-enterprise-url=GITHUB-ENTERPRISE-URL Github enterprise URL, by default taken from AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_ENTERPRISE_URL env variable
-v|vv|vvv, --verbose Increase the verbosity of messages: 1 for normal output, 2 for more verbose output and 3 for debug
Help:
When no parameters are provided, this command will generate Unreleased change log. Please be careful when using --github-release-update and --github-file-update-path since those options will do changes in project repository.
Description:
Generate change log for all tags.
Usage:
changelog:generate:all [options] [--] <project>
Arguments:
project project name, for example aeon-php/calendar
Options:
--tag-start=TAG-START Generate changelog from given tag, if not provided it starts from the earliest tag
--tag-end=TAG-END Generate changelog until given tag, if not provided it ends at the last tag
--tag-skip=TAG-SKIP Skip specific tags (multiple values allowed)
--tag-only-stable Check SemVer stability of all tags and remove all unstable
--skip-from=SKIP-FROM Skip changes from given author|authors (multiple values allowed)
--only-commits Use only commits to generate changelog
--only-pull-requests Use only pull requests to generate changelog
--compare-reverse When comparing commits, revers the order and compare start to end, instead end to start.
--format=FORMAT How to format generated changelog, available formatters: "markdown", "html" [default: "markdown"]
--theme=THEME Theme of generated changelog: "keepachangelog", "classic" [default: "keepachangelog"]
--github-release-update Update GitHub release description if you have right permissions and release exists
--github-file-update-path=GITHUB-FILE-UPDATE-PATH Update changelog file directly at GitHub by reading existing file content and changing related release section. For example: --github-file-update-path=CHANGELOG.md
--github-file-update-ref=GITHUB-FILE-UPDATE-REF The name of the commit/branch/tag from which to take file for --github-file-update-path=CHANGELOG.md option. Default: the repository’s default branch.
-h, --help Display help for the given command. When no command is given display help for the list command
-q, --quiet Do not output any message
-V, --version Display this application version
--ansi Force ANSI output
--no-ansi Disable ANSI output
-n, --no-interaction Do not ask any interactive question
--configuration=CONFIGURATION Custom path to the automation.xml configuration file.
--cache-path=CACHE-PATH Path to root cache directory, taken from sys_get_tmp_dir() function or AEON_AUTOMATION_CACHE_DIR env variable [default: "/Users/norzechowicz/.automation"]
--github-token=GITHUB-TOKEN Github personal access token, generated here: https://github.com/settings/tokens By default taken from AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_TOKEN env variable
--github-enterprise-url=GITHUB-ENTERPRISE-URL Github enterprise URL, by default taken from AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_ENTERPRISE_URL env variable
-v|vv|vvv, --verbose Increase the verbosity of messages: 1 for normal output, 2 for more verbose output and 3 for debug
Help:
When no parameters are provided, this command will generate changelog for each commit that follows semver semantic.
Description:
Update changelog file by turning Unreleased section into the next release
Usage:
changelog:release:unreleased [options] [--] <project> <changelog-file-path> <release-name>
Arguments:
project project name, for example aeon-php/calendar
changelog-file-path Path to the changelog file from repository root. For example: CHANGELOG.md
release-name Name of the next release.
Options:
--format=FORMAT How to format generated changelog, available formatters: "markdown", "html" [default: "markdown"]
--theme=THEME Theme of generated changelog: "keepachangelog", "classic" [default: "keepachangelog"]
--github-release-update Update GitHub release description if you have right permissions and release exists
--github-file-changelog-update Update changelog file by pushing commit to GitHub directly
--github-file-update-ref=GITHUB-FILE-UPDATE-REF The name of the commit/branch/tag from which to take file for changelog-file-path argument. Default: the repository’s default branch.
-h, --help Display help for the given command. When no command is given display help for the list command
-q, --quiet Do not output any message
-V, --version Display this application version
--ansi Force ANSI output
--no-ansi Disable ANSI output
-n, --no-interaction Do not ask any interactive question
--configuration=CONFIGURATION Custom path to the automation.xml configuration file.
--cache-path=CACHE-PATH Path to root cache directory, taken from sys_get_tmp_dir() function or AEON_AUTOMATION_CACHE_DIR env variable [default: "/Users/norzechowicz/.automation"]
--github-token=GITHUB-TOKEN Github personal access token, generated here: https://github.com/settings/tokens By default taken from AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_TOKEN env variable
--github-enterprise-url=GITHUB-ENTERPRISE-URL Github enterprise URL, by default taken from AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_ENTERPRISE_URL env variable
-v|vv|vvv, --verbose Increase the verbosity of messages: 1 for normal output, 2 for more verbose output and 3 for debug
Help:
This command only manipulates the changelog file, it does not create new releases.
Description:
Get project changelog.
Usage:
changelog:get [options] [--] <project>
Arguments:
project project name, for example aeon-php/calendar
Options:
--github-file-path=GITHUB-FILE-PATH changelog file path [default: "CHANGELOG.md"]
--github-file-ref=GITHUB-FILE-REF The name of the commit/branch/tag from which to take file for --github-file-path=CHANGELOG.md option. Default: the repository’s default branch.
--sha1-hash Optional display only sha1 hash of the changelog file instead of file content
-h, --help Display help for the given command. When no command is given display help for the list command
-q, --quiet Do not output any message
-V, --version Display this application version
--ansi Force ANSI output
--no-ansi Disable ANSI output
-n, --no-interaction Do not ask any interactive question
--configuration=CONFIGURATION Custom path to the automation.xml configuration file.
--cache-path=CACHE-PATH Path to root cache directory, taken from sys_get_tmp_dir() function or AEON_AUTOMATION_CACHE_DIR env variable [default: "/Users/norzechowicz/.automation"]
--github-token=GITHUB-TOKEN Github personal access token, generated here: https://github.com/settings/tokens By default taken from AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_TOKEN env variable
--github-enterprise-url=GITHUB-ENTERPRISE-URL Github enterprise URL, by default taken from AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_ENTERPRISE_URL env variable
-v|vv|vvv, --verbose Increase the verbosity of messages: 1 for normal output, 2 for more verbose output and 3 for debug
Help:
When no parameters are provided, this command will generate Unreleased change log. Please be careful when using --github-release-update and --github-file-update-path since those options will do changes in project repository.
Description:
Display all tags following SemVer convention sorted from the latest to oldest
Usage:
tag:list [options] [--] <project>
Arguments:
project project name
Options:
--with-date display date when tag was committed
--with-commit display commit SHA of tag
--limit=LIMIT Maximum number of tags to get
-h, --help Display help for the given command. When no command is given display help for the list command
-q, --quiet Do not output any message
-V, --version Display this application version
--ansi Force ANSI output
--no-ansi Disable ANSI output
-n, --no-interaction Do not ask any interactive question
--configuration=CONFIGURATION Custom path to the automation.xml configuration file.
--cache-path=CACHE-PATH Path to root cache directory, taken from sys_get_tmp_dir() function or AEON_AUTOMATION_CACHE_DIR env variable [default: "/Users/norzechowicz/.automation"]
--github-token=GITHUB-TOKEN Github personal access token, generated here: https://github.com/settings/tokens By default taken from AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_TOKEN env variable
--github-enterprise-url=GITHUB-ENTERPRISE-URL Github enterprise URL, by default taken from AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_ENTERPRISE_URL env variable
-v|vv|vvv, --verbose Increase the verbosity of messages: 1 for normal output, 2 for more verbose output and 3 for debug
Description:
List project Github actions workflows billable minutes usage in current billing cycle
Usage:
workflow:timing:list [options] [--] <project>
Arguments:
project project name
Options:
--os=OS Show billable minutes for operating systems [default: ["ubuntu","macos","windows"]] (multiple values allowed)
-h, --help Display help for the given command. When no command is given display help for the list command
-q, --quiet Do not output any message
-V, --version Display this application version
--ansi Force ANSI output
--no-ansi Disable ANSI output
-n, --no-interaction Do not ask any interactive question
--configuration=CONFIGURATION Custom path to the automation.xml configuration file.
--cache-path=CACHE-PATH Path to root cache directory, taken from sys_get_tmp_dir() function or AEON_AUTOMATION_CACHE_DIR env variable [default: "/Users/norzechowicz/.automation"]
--github-token=GITHUB-TOKEN Github personal access token, generated here: https://github.com/settings/tokens By default taken from AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_TOKEN env variable
--github-enterprise-url=GITHUB-ENTERPRISE-URL Github enterprise URL, by default taken from AEON_AUTOMATION_GH_ENTERPRISE_URL env variable
-v|vv|vvv, --verbose Increase the verbosity of messages: 1 for normal output, 2 for more verbose output and 3 for debug
Help:
Billable minutes only apply to workflows in private repositories that use GitHub-hosted runners.
If you would lik to integrate Automation with your project but not sure how, feel free to Open Integration Request.
We will first test your project and if possible prepare an integration Pull Request.