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• Changelog generation has never been so easy
• What’s the point of a changelog?
• Why should I care?
• Installation
• Usage
  • Running with CLI:
  • Running with Docker
• Output example
  • Params
  • Params File
  • GitHub token
• Migrating from a manual changelog
  • Rake task
• Features and advantages of this project
  • Using the summary section feature
  • Alternatives
  • Projects using this library
• Practical Use Cases
  • Creating GitHub Release Notes
• Am I missing some essential feature?
• FAQ
• Contributing
• Contact us
• License

Fully automated changelog generation - This gem generates a changelog file based ontags,issues and mergedpull requests (and splits them into separate lists according to labels) from GitHub.

Since you don't have to fill yourCHANGELOG.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 forpeople. "Changelogs make it easier for users andcontributors to see precisely what notable changes have been made between eachrelease (or version) of the project."

➡️https://keepachangelog.com

GitHub Changelog Generator is aRubyprogram, distributed as a RubyGem. The Ruby language homepage has anInstallation page.

Install the gem like:

$ gem install github_changelog_generator

Depending on your system, youmay need to run the shell as an Administrator (Windows),or usesudo gem install github_changelog_generator (Linux).

   github_changelog_generator -u github_project_namespace -p github_project

(where the project namespace islikely your username if it's a project you own, but it could also be the namespace of the project)

UsingDocker is an alternative to installing Ruby and the gem.

Example invocation:

$ docker run -it --rm -v "$(pwd)":/usr/local/src/your-app githubchangeloggenerator/github-changelog-generator

• For GitHub Enterprise repos, specifyboth--github-site and--github-api options:

   $ github_changelog_generator --github-site="https://github.yoursite.com" \                            --github-api="https://github.yoursite.com/api/v3/"

This generates aCHANGELOG.md, with pretty Markdown formatting.

• Look atCHANGELOG.md for this project

• ActionSheetPicker-3.0/CHANGELOG.md was generated by command:

  $ github_changelog_generator -u github-changelog-generator -p ActionSheetPicker-3.0

• In general, it looks like this:

1.2.5 (2015-01-15)

Full Changelog

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)

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=falsefuture-release=5.0.0since-tag=1.0.0

GitHub only allows50 unauthenticated requests per hour.

Therefore, it's recommended to run this script with authentication by using atoken.

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 theCHANGELOG_GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable to your 40 digit token

You can set an environment variable by running the following command at the prompt, or by adding it to your shell profile (e.g.,.env,~/.bash_profile,~/.zshrc, etc):

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-limiting

It'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 forgithub-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 aHISTORY.md file in your project, it will automatically be picked as the static historical changelog and appended.

You loverake? We do, too! So, we've made it even easier for you:we've provided arake task library for your changelog generation.

Configure the task in yourRakefile:

require'github_changelog_generator/task'GitHubChangelogGenerator::RakeTask.new:changelogdo |config|config.user='username'config.project='project-name'config.since_tag='0.1.14'config.future_release='0.2.0'end

All command-line options can be passed to therake task asconfigparameters. And since you're naming therake task yourself, you can createas many as you want.

You can look for params names from theparser source code (#setup_parser). For example, to translate the bugs label to Portuguese, instead of settingconfig.bugs_label, you have to setconfig.bug_prefix, and so on.

• Generate canonical, neat changelog file, with default sections that followbasic changelog guidelines 💎

• Optionally generateUnreleased changes (closed issues that have not released yet) 💫

• GitHub Enterprise support via command line options! 🏭

• Flexible formatcustomization:

  • Customize issues thatshould be added to changelog ✳️
  • Custom date formats supported (but keepISO 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'smilestone the same name as the tag of version 📌
  • Automaticallyexclude specific issues that are irrelevant to your changelog (by default, any issue labeledquestion,duplicate,invalid, orwontfix) ✂️

• Distinguish issuesby labels. 🔎

  • Merged pull requests (all merged pull-requests) 🔀
  • Bug fixes (issues labeledbug) 🪲
  • Enhancements (issues labeledenhancement) 🌟
  • Issues (closed issues with no labels) 🚱
  • Plus any additional custom label-to-section mappings you want ⚙️

• Manually include or exclude issues by labels 🔧

• Customize lots more! Tweak the changelog to fit your preferences 🎩(Seegithub_changelog_generator --help for details)

For each version, you can add arelease 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:

1. Create a new GitHub Issue
2. In the Issue'sDescription field, add your release summary content

![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/12690315/45935880-006a8200-bfeb-11e8-958e-ff742ae66b96.png)Hello, World! :tada:

3. Set the Issue Labelrelease-summary and add it to the GitHub Milestonev1.0.0
4. Close the Issue and executegithub-changelog-generator
5. The result looks like this:

v1.0.0 (2014-11-07)

Full Changelog

Hello, World! 🎉

Implemented enhancements:

• Add some features

Here is awikipage 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 awikipage 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 usinggithub_changelog_generator to generate your project's changelog, or know of other projects using it, pleaseadd it to this list.

github_changelog_generator can be used in combination with thegithub cli to create release notes. Use the--since-tag and--output options ofgithub_changelog_generator to create a changelog for the current release and store the results in a file. In theexample below, version2.0.0 is the current release and version1.0.0 is the previous release.

mkdir -p buildgithub_changelog_generator \  --since-tag 1.0.0 \  --output build/changelog.md

Then use therelease create feature of the github cli to create a new github release

gh release create 2.0.0 \  --notes-file build/changelog.md \  --title 2.0.0

• Nothing is impossible!

• Open anissue and let's make the generator better together!

• 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 innext 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!

• I want to define my own label-to-section mapping, how can I do it?

This is possible using either theadd-sections orconfigure-sectionsentry in.github_changelog_generator. For example, to add a single newentry called "Maintenance" that will catch PRs tagged with yourmaintenancelabel, you can add to.github_changelog_generator the line:

add-sections= {"maintenance":{"prefix":"**Project maintenance**","labels":["maintenance"]}}

A similar approach can be used viaconfigure-sections to set all sectionproperties (including adding new ones!).

• 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 tocontrol which libraries you use, you can use Bundler.

In a Gemfile, perhaps in a non-deployed:development group, add thisgem:

group:developmentdogem'github_changelog_generator',require:falseend

Then you can keep back dependencies like rack, which currently is onlycompatible with Ruby >= 2.2.2. So, use an older version for your app byadding a line like this to the Gemfile:

gem 'rack', '~> 1.6'

This way, you can keep on using github_changelog_generator, even if youcan't get the latest version of Ruby installed.

• Windows: 1.14.x wants to create a file on an invalid path. Why?

Windows:v1.14.0 introduced a bug where it attempts to create /tmp/github_changelog-logger.log... which isn't a valid path on Windows and thus fails

Workaround: Create aC:\tmp.

Would you like to contribute to this project?CONTRIBUTING.md has all the details on how to do that.

Join the chat at gitter : github-changelog-generator

GitHub Changelog Generator is released under theMIT License.