auto-changelog

What is auto-changelog?

The auto-changelog npm package is designed to automatically generate a changelog from git tags and commit history. It simplifies the process of maintaining a changelog by automating the extraction of relevant information from your repository.

What are auto-changelog's main functionalities?

Generate Changelog

This command generates a changelog file (CHANGELOG.md) in the root of your project by default. It uses the commit history and tags to create a structured changelog.

npx auto-changelog

Custom Output File

This command allows you to specify a custom output file for the changelog. Instead of the default CHANGELOG.md, it will generate the changelog in the specified file.

npx auto-changelog --output CUSTOM_CHANGELOG.md

Exclude Commits

This command excludes commits that match a specific pattern from the changelog. In this example, commits with 'Merge pull request' in their message will be ignored.

npx auto-changelog --ignore-commit-pattern 'Merge pull request'

Custom Template

This command allows you to use a custom Handlebars template for generating the changelog. You can define your own template to control the format and content of the changelog.

npx auto-changelog --template custom-template.hbs

Other packages similar to auto-changelog

standard-version

standard-version is a utility for versioning and changelog generation based on conventional commits. It provides a standard way to release versions and generate changelogs, and it integrates well with npm scripts. Compared to auto-changelog, standard-version focuses more on the entire release process, including version bumping and tagging.

conventional-changelog

conventional-changelog is a tool for generating changelogs based on conventional commit messages. It is highly configurable and can be used as a library or CLI tool. Unlike auto-changelog, which is more straightforward, conventional-changelog offers more flexibility and customization options for generating changelogs.

release-it

release-it is a versatile tool for automating versioning and package publishing. It can generate changelogs, bump versions, create GitHub releases, and publish packages to npm. Compared to auto-changelog, release-it provides a more comprehensive solution for managing the entire release workflow.

README

auto-changelog

Command line tool for generating a changelog from git tags and commit history. Used by Modernizr, Netlify, Neutrino and Velocity.js.

Installation

npm install -g auto-changelog

Usage

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

Usage: auto-changelog [options]

Options:

  -o, --output [file]                 # output file, default: CHANGELOG.md
  -c, --config [file]                 # config file location, default: .auto-changelog
  -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
  -b, --backfill-limit [count]        # number of commits to backfill empty releases with, default: 3
      --commit-url [url]              # override url for commits, use {id} for commit id
      --issue-url [url]               # override url for issues, use {id} for issue id
      --merge-url [url]               # override url for merges, use {id} for merge id
      --compare-url [url]             # override url for compares, use {from} and {to} for tags
      --issue-pattern [regex]         # override regex pattern for issues in commit messages
      --breaking-pattern [regex]      # regex pattern for breaking change commits
      --merge-pattern [regex]         # add custom regex pattern for merge commits
      --ignore-commit-pattern [regex] # pattern to ignore when parsing commits
      --tag-pattern [regex]           # override regex pattern for version tags
      --tag-prefix [prefix]           # prefix used in version tags, default: v
      --starting-version [tag]        # specify earliest version to include in changelog
      --starting-date [yyyy-mm-dd]    # specify earliest date to include in changelog
      --ending-version [tag]          # specify latest version to include in changelog
      --sort-commits [property]       # sort commits by property [relevance, date, date-desc, subject, subject-desc], default: relevance
      --release-summary               # display tagged commit message body as release summary
      --unreleased-only               # only output unreleased changes
      --hide-empty-releases           # hide empty releases
      --hide-credit                   # hide auto-changelog credit
      --handlebars-setup [file]       # handlebars setup file
      --append-git-log [string]       # string to append to git log command
      --append-git-tag [string]       # string to append to git tag command
      --prepend                       # prepend changelog to output file
      --stdout                        # output changelog to stdout
  -V, --version                       # output the version number
  -h, --help                          # output usage information


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

# Write log to HISTORY.md using keepachangelog template
auto-changelog --output HISTORY.md --template keepachangelog

# Disable the commit limit, rendering all commits for every release
auto-changelog --commit-limit false

Requirements

auto-changelog is designed to be as flexible as possible, providing a clear changelog for any project. There are only two absolute requirements:

• You should be using git 1.7.2 or later
• All versions should be 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 auto-changelog to dev dependencies:

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

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

{
  "name": "my-awesome-package",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "devDependencies": {
    "auto-changelog": "*"
  },
  "scripts": {
    "version": "auto-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.

Advanced Usage

URL Overrides

Links to commits, issues, pull requests and version diffs are automatically generated based on your remote URL. GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket and Azure DevOps are all supported. If you have an unusual remote or need to override one of the link formats, use --commit-url, --issue-url or --merge-url with an {id} token. For custom version diffs, use --compare-url with {from} and {to} tokens.

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

# Link to custom diff page
auto-changelog --compare-url https://example.com/repo/compare/{from}...{to}

Add to an existing changelog

If you’d like to keep an existing changelog below your generated one, just add <!-- auto-changelog-above --> to your current changelog. The generated changelog will be added above this token, and anything below will remain.

Configuration

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

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

You can also store config options in an .auto-changelog file in your project root:

{
  "output": "HISTORY.md",
  "template": "keepachangelog",
  "unreleased": true,
  "commitLimit": false
}

Note that any options set in package.json will take precedence over any set in .auto-changelog.

Tag prefixes

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
auto-changelog --tag-prefix my-package/

Tag patterns

By default, auto-changelog looks for valid semver tags to build a list of releases. If you are using another format (or want to include all tags), use --tag-pattern [regex]:

# When all versions are tagged like build-12345
auto-changelog --tag-pattern build-\d+

# Include any tag as a release
auto-changelog --tag-pattern .+

Breaking changes

If you use a common pattern in your commit messages for breaking changes, use --breaking-pattern to highlight those commits as breaking changes in your changelog. Breaking change commits will always be listed as part of a release, regardless of any --commit-limit set.

auto-changelog --breaking-pattern "BREAKING CHANGE:"

Custom issue patterns

By default, auto-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
auto-changelog --issue-pattern [A-Z]+-\d+ --issue-url https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/{id}

Or, in your package.json:

{
  "name": "my-awesome-package",
  "auto-changelog": {
    "issueUrl": "https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/{id}",
    "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
auto-changelog --issue-pattern "[Ff]ixes ([A-Z]+-\d+)"

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:

auto-changelog --template changelog-template.hbs

You can also point to an external template by passing in a URL:

auto-changelog --template https://example.com/templates/compact.hbs

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

auto-changelog --template json --output changelog-data.json

commit-list helper

Use {{#commit-list}} to render a list of commits depending on certain patterns in the commit messages:

{{#each releases}}
  ### [{{title}}]({{href}})

  {{! List commits with `Breaking change: ` somewhere in the message }}
  {{#commit-list commits heading='### Breaking Changes' message='Breaking change: '}}
    - {{subject}} [`{{shorthash}}`]({{href}})
  {{/commit-list}}

  {{! List commits that add new features, but not those already listed above }}
  {{#commit-list commits heading='### New Features' message='feat: ' exclude='Breaking change: '}}
    - {{subject}} [`{{shorthash}}`]({{href}})
  {{/commit-list}}
{{/each}}

Option	Description
heading	A heading for the list, only renders if at least one commit matches
message	A regex pattern to match against the entire commit message
subject	A regex pattern to match against the commit subject only
exclude	A regex pattern to exclude from the list – useful for avoiding listing commits more than once

Replacing text

To insert links or other markup to PR titles and commit messages that appear in the log, use the replaceText option in your package.json:

{
  "name": "my-awesome-package",
  "auto-changelog": {
    "replaceText": {
      "(ABC-\\d+)": "[`$1`](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/$1)"
    }
  }
}

Here, any time a pattern like ABC-123 appears in your log, it will be replaced with a link to the relevant issue in Jira. Each pattern is applied using string.replace(new RegExp(key, 'g'), value).

Handlebars setup file

The --handlebars-setup options allows you to point to a file to add custom Handlebars helpers, for use in custom templates using --template. Paths are relative to the directory in which you run auto-changelog.

auto-changelog --handlebars-setup setup.js --template custom-template.hbs

// setup.js
module.exports = function (Handlebars) {
  Handlebars.registerHelper('custom', function (context, options) {
    return 'custom helpers!'
  })
}

// custom-template.hbs
Now you can use {{custom}}

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.

Changelog

v2.4.0

3 February 2022

• Logical handling of --starting-version #227
• Trim commit subject #225
• feat(commits.js): added niceDate format of commits #206
• Logical handling of --starting-version (#227) #221
• Add ending-version option #209
• Do not sort tags when sorting via --append-git-tag #197 #210
• Bump packages 9d271fc
• yarn upgrade c227823
• --ending-version fixes dbd36d5