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- Output example
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Fully automated changelog generation - This gem generates a changelog file based on tags, issues and merged pull requests (and splits them into separate lists according to labels) from 
GitHub Issue Tracker.
Since you don't have to fill your CHANGELOG.md manually now: just run the script, relax and take a cup of ☕ before your next release! 🎉
To make it easier for users and contributors to see precisely what notable changes have been made between each release (or version) of the project.
Because software tools are for people. "Changelogs make it easier for users and contributors to see precisely what notable changes have been made between each release (or version) of the project."
GitHub Changelog Generator is a Ruby program, distributed as a RubyGem. The Ruby language homepage has an Installation page.
Install the gem like:
$ gem install github_changelog_generator
Depending on your system, you may need to run the shell as an Administrator (Windows),
or use sudo gem install github_changelog_generator (Linux).
Using Docker is an alternative to installing Ruby and the gem.
ferrarimarco has made a Docker image available that you can use.
Example invocation:
$ docker run -it --rm -v "$(pwd)":/usr/local/src/your-app ferrarimarco/github-changelog-generator
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Look at CHANGELOG.md for this project
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ActionSheetPicker-3.0/CHANGELOG.md was generated by command:
$ github_changelog_generator -u skywinder -p ActionSheetPicker-3.0 -
In general, it looks like this:
1.2.5 (2015-01-15)
Implemented enhancements:
- Use milestone to specify in which version bug was fixed #22
Fixed bugs:
- Error when trying to generate log for repo without tags #32
Merged pull requests:
PrettyPrint class is included using lowercase 'pp' #43 (schwing)
support enterprise github via command line options #42 (glenlovett)
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Run this:
$ github_changelog_generator -u github_username -p github_projector, on the 1.14.x (current stable release)
$ github_changelog_generator github_username/github_project -
For Github Enterprise repos, specify both
--github-siteand--github-apioptions:$ github_changelog_generator --github-site="https://github.yoursite.com" \ --github-api="https://github.yoursite.com/api/v3/"
This generates a CHANGELOG.md, with pretty Markdown formatting.
Print help for all command-line options to learn more details:
$ github_changelog_generator --help
For more details about params, read the Wiki page: Advanced changelog generation examples
In your project root, you can put a params file named .github_changelog_generator to override default params:
Example:
unreleased=false
future-release=5.0.0
since-tag=1.0.0
GitHub only allows 50 unauthenticated requests per hour.
Therefore, it's recommended to run this script with authentication by using a token.
Here's how:
- Generate a token here - you only need "repo" scope for private repositories
- Either:
- Run the script with
--token <your-40-digit-token>; OR - Set the
CHANGELOG_GITHUB_TOKENenvironment variable to your 40 digit token
- Run the script with
You can set an environment variable by running the following command at the prompt, or by adding it to your shell profile (e.g., ~/.bash_profile or ~/.zshrc):
export CHANGELOG_GITHUB_TOKEN="«your-40-digit-github-token»"
So, if you get a message like this:
API rate limit exceeded for github_username.
See: https://developer.github.com/v3/#rate-limitingIt's time to create this token! (Or, wait an hour for GitHub to reset your unauthenticated request limit.)
Knowing how dedicated you are to your project, you probably haven't been waiting for github-changelog-generator to keep a changelog.
But you probably don't want your project's open issues and PRs for all past features listed in your historic changelog, either.
That's where --base <your-manual-changelog.md> comes in handy!
This option lets append your old manual changelog to the end of the generated entries.
If you have a HISTORY.md file in your project, it will automatically be picked as the static historical changelog and appended.
You love rake? We do, too! So, we've made it even easier for you:
we've provided a rake task library for your changelog generation.
Configure the task in your Rakefile:
require 'github_changelog_generator/task'
GitHubChangelogGenerator::RakeTask.new :changelog do |config|
config.user = 'username'
config.project = 'project-name'
config.since_tag = '0.1.14'
config.future_release = '0.2.0'
endAll command-line options can be passed to the rake task as config
parameters. And since you're naming the rake task yourself, you can create
as many as you want.
You can look for params names from the parser source code (#setup_parser). For example, to translate the bugs label to Portuguese, instead of setting config.bugs_label, you have to set config.bug_prefix, and so on.
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Generate canonical, neat changelog file, with default sections that follow basic changelog guidelines 💎
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Optionally generate Unreleased changes (closed issues that have not released yet) 💫
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GitHub Enterprise support via command line options! 🏭
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Flexible format customization:
- Customize issues that should be added to changelog ✳️
- Custom date formats supported (but keep ISO 8601 in mind!) 📅
- Manually specify the version that fixed an issue (for cases when the issue's Closed date doesn't match) by giving the issue's
milestonethe same name as the tag of version 📌 - Automatically exclude specific issues that are irrelevant to your changelog (by default, any issue labeled
question,duplicate,invalid, orwontfix) ✂️
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Distinguish issues by labels. 🔎
- Merged pull requests (all merged pull-requests) 🔀
- Bug fixes (issues labeled
bug) 🪲 - Enhancements (issues labeled
enhancement) 🌟 - Issues (closed issues with no labels) 🚱
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Manually include or exclude issues by labels 🔧
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Customize lots more! Tweak the changelog to fit your preferences 🎩 (See
github_changelog_generator --helpfor details)
For each version, you can add a release summary with text, images, gif animations, etc, and show new features and notes clearly to the user. This is done using GitHub metadata.
Example: adding the release summary for v1.0.0:
- Create a new GitHub Issue
- In the Issue's Description field, add your release summary content
Hello, World! :tada:
- Set the Issue Label
release-summaryand add it to the GitHub Milestonev1.0.0 - Close the Issue and execute
github-changelog-generator - The result looks like this:
v1.0.0 (2014-11-07)
Hello, World! 🎉
Implemented enhancements:
- Add some features
Here is a wikipage list of alternatives that I found. But none satisfied my requirements.
If you know other projects, feel free to edit this Wiki page!
Here's a wikipage list of projects.
If you've used this project in a live app, please let me know! Nothing makes me happier than seeing someone else take my work and go wild with it.
If you are using github_changelog_generator to generate your project's changelog, or know of other projects using it, please add it to this list.
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Nothing is impossible!
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Open an issue and let's make the generator better together!
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Bug reports, feature requests, patches, and well-wishes are always welcome. ❗
- I already use GitHub Releases. Why do I need this?
GitHub Releases is a very good thing. And it's very good practice to maintain it. (Not a lot of people are using it yet!) ㊗️
BTW: I would like to support GitHub Releases in next releases ;)
I'm not trying to compare the quality of handwritten and auto-generated logs. That said....
An auto-generated changelog really helps, even if you manually fill in the release notes!
For example:
When you find a closed bug, it is very useful to know which release fixed it.
So that you can easily find the issue by # in CHANGELOG.md.
- It's not quite as easy to find this in handwritten releases notes.
- A generated file saves you the trouble of remembering everything; sometimes people forget to add things to a handwritten file.
Ultimately, I think GitHub Releases are ideal for end-users.
Meanwhile, CHANGELOG.md lives right in the repository, with its detailed list of changes, which is handy for developers.
Finally, there's nothing wrong with using GitHub Releases alongside CHANGELOG.md in this combination.
- I got an "API rate limit exceeded" error message. What does this mean?
GitHub limits the number of API requests you can make in an hour. You can make up to 5,000 requests per hour. For unauthenticated requests, the rate limit is only up to 60 requests per hour. Unauthenticated requests are associated with your IP address (not the user making requests).
If you're seeing this warning, please do the following:
- Make sure you're providing an OAuth token, so you're not making requests anonymously. Using an OAuth token increases your hourly request maximum from 60 to 5000.
- If you have a large repo with lots of issues/PRs, you can use
--max-issues NUMto limit the number of issues that are pulled back. For example:--max-issues 1000
- My Ruby version is very old, can I use this?
When your Ruby is old, and you don't want to upgrade, and you want to control which libraries you use, you can use Bundler.
In a Gemfile, perhaps in a non-deployed :development group, add this
gem:
group :development do
gem 'github_changelog_generator', require: false
endThen you can keep back dependencies like rack, which currently is only compatible with Ruby >= 2.2.2. So, use an older version for your app by adding a line like this to the Gemfile:
gem 'rack', '~> 1.6'
This way, you can keep on using github_changelog_generator, even if you can't get the latest version of Ruby installed.
We have collected notes on how to contribute to this project in CONTRIBUTING.md.
Github Changelog Generator is released under the MIT License.