Standard Version
stop using npm version
, use standard-version
it rocks!
Automatic versioning and CHANGELOG management, using GitHub's new squash button and
the recommended workflow for conventional-changelog
.
how it works:
- when you land commits on your
master
branch, select the Squash and Merge option. - add a title and body that follows the conventional-changelog-standard conventions.
- when you're ready to release to npm:
git checkout master; git pull origin master
- run
standard-version
git push --follow-tags origin master; npm publish
standard-version
does the following:
- bumps the version in package.json (based on your commit history)
- uses conventional-changelog to update CHANGELOG.md
- commits package.json and CHANGELOG.md
- tags a new release
Installation
As npm run
script
Install and add to devDependencies
:
npm i --save-dev standard-version
Add an npm run
script to your package.json:
{
"scripts": {
"release": "standard-version"
}
}
Now you can use npm run release
in place of npm version
.
This has the benefit of making your repo/package more portable, so that other developers can cut releases without having to globally install standard-version
on their machine.
As global bin
Install globally (add to your PATH
):
npm i -g standard-version
Now you can use standard-version
in place of npm version
.
This has the benefit of allowing you to use standard-version
on any repo/package without adding a dev dependency to each one.
Usage
First Release
To generate your changelog for your first release, simply do:
npm run release -- --first-release
standard-version --first-release
This will tag a release without bumping the version in package.json.
When ready, push the git tag and npm publish
your first release. \o/
Cut a Release
If you typically use npm version
to cut a new release, do this instead:
npm run release
standard-version
As long as your git commit messages are conventional and accurate, you no longer need to specify the semver type - and you get CHANGELOG generation for free! \o/
After you cut a release, you can push the new git tag and npm publish
(or npm publish --tag next
) when you're ready.
CLI Help
npm run release -- --help
standard-version --help
Commit Message Convention, at a Glance
patches:
git commit -a -m "fix(parsing): fixed a bug in our parser"
features:
git commit -a -m "feat(parser): we now have a parser \o/"
breaking changes:
git commit -a -m "feat(new-parser): introduces a new parsing library
BREAKING CHANGE: new library does not support foo-construct"
other changes:
You decide, e.g., docs, chore, etc.
git commit -a -m "docs: fixed up the docs a bit"
but wait, there's more!
Github usernames (@bcoe
) and issue references (#133) will be swapped out for the
appropriate URLs in your CHANGELOG.
Badges!
Tell your users that you adhere to the standard-version
commit guidelines:
[![Standard Version](https://img.shields.io/badge/release-standard%20version-brightgreen.svg)](https://github.com/conventional-changelog/standard-version)
FAQ
How is standard-version
different from semantic-release
?
semantic-release
is a fully automated library/system for versioning, changelog generation, git tagging, and publishing to the npm registry.
standard-version
is different because it handles the versioning, changelog generation, and git tagging for you without automatic pushing (to GitHub) or publishing (to an npm registry). Use of standard-version
only affects your local git repo - it doesn't affect remote resources at all. After you run standard-version
, you still have to ability to review things and correct mistakes if you want to.
They are both based on the same foundation of structured commit messages (using Angular format), but standard-version
is a good choice for folks who are not yet comfortable letting publishes go out automatically. In this way, you can view standard-version
as an incremental step to adopting semantic-release
.
We think they are both fantastic tools, and we encourage folks to use semantic-release
instead of standard-version
if it makes sense for them.
Should I always squash commits when merging PRs?
The instructions to squash commits when merging pull requests assumes that one PR equals, at most, one feature or fix.
If you have multiple features or fixes landing in a single PR and each commit uses a structured message, then you can do a standard merge when accepting the PR. This will preserve the commit history from your branch after the merge.
Although this will allow each commit to be included as separate entries in your CHANGELOG, the entries will not be able to reference the PR that pulled the changes in because the preserved commit messages do not include the PR number.
For this reason, we recommend keeping the scope of each PR to one general feature or fix. In practice, this allows you to use unstructured commit messages when committing each little change and then squash them into a single commit with a structured message (referencing the PR number) once they have been reviewed and accepted.
License
ISC