Reloaded Changelog Workflow

This is a GitHub composite action that generates a changelog using the auto-changelog tool. It provides various options to customize the changelog generation process and supports uploading the generated changelog as a GitHub release or an artifact.

Example Usage

.github/workflows/changelog.yml:

name: Generate Changelog

on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]
    tags:
      - '*'
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  changelog:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions: 
      contents: write

    steps:
      # Checkout is automatic
      - name: Generate Changelog
        uses: Reloaded-Project/devops-changelog@v1
        with:
          output: CHANGELOG.md
          unreleased: false
          commit-limit: 50
          upload-artifact: true
          upload-release: true
          template: keepachangelog
          override-starting-version: true
          hide-credit: false
          is-release: ${{ startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/tags/') }}
          release-tag: ${{ github.ref_name }}

Setup

To use this action in your own repository:

1. Create a new workflow file (e.g., .github/workflows/changelog.yml) in your repository.
2. Copy the example usage code from above into the new workflow file.
3. Customize the action inputs according to your requirements.

Configuration

Inputs

The following flags are directly passed to the underlying auto-changelog tool:

(PS. If you find it useful, consider donating to the original author)

Input	Required	Default	Description
output	No	CHANGELOG.md	Output file path
config	No	""	Path to the auto-changelog config file
template	No	compact	Specify template to use [compact, keepachangelog, json]
remote	No	""	Specify git remote to use for links
package	No	""	Use version from file as latest release
latest-version	No	""	Use specified version as latest release
unreleased	No	false	Include section for unreleased changes
commit-limit	No	""	Number of commits to display per release
backfill-limit	No	""	Number of commits to backfill empty releases with
commit-url	No	""	Override URL for commits, use {id} for commit id
issue-url	No	""	Override URL for issues, use {id} for issue id
merge-url	No	""	Override URL for merges, use {id} for merge id
compare-url	No	""	Override URL for compares, use {from} and {to} for tags
issue-pattern	No	""	Override regex pattern for issues in commit messages
breaking-pattern	No	""	Regex pattern for breaking change commits
merge-pattern	No	""	Add custom regex pattern for merge commits
commit-pattern	No	""	Pattern to include when parsing commits
ignore-commit-pattern	No	""	Pattern to ignore when parsing commits
tag-pattern	No	""	Override regex pattern for version tags
tag-prefix	No	""	Prefix used in version tags
starting-version	No	""	Specify earliest version to include in changelog
starting-date	No	""	Specify earliest date to include in changelog
ending-version	No	""	Specify latest version to include in changelog
sort-commits	No	relevance	Sort commits by property [relevance, date, date-desc, subject, subject-desc]
release-summary	No	false	Display tagged commit message body as release summary
unreleased-only	No	false	Only output unreleased changes
hide-empty-releases	No	false	Hide empty releases
hide-credit	No	false	Hide auto-changelog credit
handlebars-setup	No	""	Handlebars setup file
append-git-log	No	""	String to append to git log command
append-git-tag	No	""	String to append to git tag command
prepend	No	false	Prepend changelog to output file
stdout	No	false	Output changelog to stdout

And the following parameters are specific to this workflow.

Input	Required	Default	Description
auto-checkout	No	true	Performs automatic checkout of current repository.
upload-artifact	No	false	Upload the generated changelog as an artifact
artifact-name	No	Changelog	Name of the artifact for the uploaded changelog.
upload-release	No	false	Upload the generated changelog to GitHub Releases
is-release	No	false	Whether this is a GitHub Release
release-tag	No	""	Tag associated with the GitHub Release
override-starting-version	No	false	Override the starting version with the release tag if this is a GitHub Release

Extra Examples

Find more examples in the tests.

Default Parameters

- name: Generate Changelog
  uses: Reloaded-Project/devops-changelog@v1

This example uses the default parameters to generate the changelog.

This generates a CHANGELOG.md file with the default settings.

Custom Parameters

- name: Generate Changelog
  uses: Reloaded-Project/devops-changelog@v1
  with:
    output: custom-changelog.md
    unreleased: true
    commit-limit: 10
    sort-commits: date-desc
    hide-credit: true

This example demonstrates using custom parameters to customize the changelog generation. It sets the following inputs:

• output: Specifies the output file name as custom-changelog.md.
• unreleased: Includes a section for unreleased changes.
• commit-limit: Limits the number of commits displayed per release to 10.
• sort-commits: Sorts the commits by date in descending order.
• hide-credit: Hides the auto-changelog credit.

Upload Artifact

- name: Generate Changelog
  uses: Reloaded-Project/devops-changelog@v1
  with:
    # Upload the changelog as an arifact.
    upload-artifact: true

    # Upload the changelog to GitHub Releases.
    upload-release: true

    # These change how the changelog is generated.
    # They will limit the changelog to changes since last release.
    is-release: ${{ startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/tags/v') }}
    release-tag: ${{ github.ref }}

Why this Exists?

To simplify deployment.

I maintain a lot of projects in my spare time, a very huge amount.

Keeping workflows in sync across all of them is time consuming; so I decided to make a full wrapper around the auto-changelog utility that most of my repositories use.

Hopefully it turns useful.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you encounter any issues or have suggestions for improvements, please open an issue or submit a pull request in this repository.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.