A simple tool to make changes to your CHANGELOG.md file easier, if they follow the keep a changelog convention.

• This is a Rust project and the binaries are not published anywhere. This means that you need to have Rust/Cargo installed.
• This tool talks to the GitHub API, therefore you need to have a GITHUB_API_TOKEN environment variable.

cargo build --release

This will create a changelog binary at ./target/release/changelog.

I am using zshrc, and I make sure to export the ./target/release/ folder so that I can automatically run the changelog binary.

PATH=./target/release:$PATH

In addition, I also have this PATH, so that I can run changelog from anywhere on my system.

PATH=/path-to-changelog-project/target/release:$PATH

Every command has the following options:

-f, --filename <FILENAME>    The changelog filename [default: CHANGELOG.md]
-h, --help                   Print help information
    --pwd <PWD>              The current working directory [default: .]

This will create a new CHANGELOG.md file if it doesn't already exist. It will also take the shared options into account from above.

changelog init

Every command behaves exactly the same and will add a new entry to the CHANGELOG.md file in their own section.

You can use a GitHub link to a PR, issue, commit or discussion. This will add a link with the title of the resource from above and a link to it.

changelog <command> https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>/pull/<number>

If you want to write your own message instead of fetching the title from the GitHub resource, then you can use the -m or --message flag instead:

changelog <command> -m "My new changelog entry"

Here is a list of all the commands and their sections:

• changelog add adds a new entry to the ### Added section
• changelog fix adds a new entry to the ### Fixed section
• changelog change adds a new entry to the ### Changed section
• changelog remove adds a new entry to the ### Removed section
• changelog deprecate adds a new entry to the ### Deprecated section

This will print out the contents of a version as plain text, which is useful if you want to get this data to insert into your release notes.

By default we will print out the notes from the [Unreleased] section if entries already exist in that section. If not, then we will copy the contents of the latest version.

• changelog notes unreleased this will always print the notes of the [Unreleased] section, even if nothing exists yet.
• changelog notes latest this will always print the notes of the newest version in the list.
• changelog notes 3.0.5, this will print the notes of a specific version.

This will allow you to list the available versions (without the notes) as a quick summary. By default we will list the 10 most recent versions.

• -a, --amount <AMOUNT> amount of versions to show [default: 10]
• --all shorthand for "--amount all"

E.g.:

$ changelog list
- unreleased      https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>/compare/v0.1.0...HEAD
- 0.1.0           https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>/releases/tag/v0.1.0

This allows you to create a new "release". It will take anything from the [Unreleased] section into the new version. It will also add the current date and update the references.

Currently we assume that you have a package.json file, if you are using one of the implicit/relative strategies.

We have different strategies for releasing:

• infer when you run the changelog release as-is, then we will infer the version found in the package.json. This is useful in case you just ran npm version patch for example.
• major when you run changelog release major, then we will take the current version from package.json, and increase the major part of the semver.
• minor when you run changelog release minor, then we will take the current version from package.json, and increase the minor part of the semver.
• patch when you run changelog release patch, then we will take the current version from package.json, and increase the patch part of the semver.
• <explicit> when you run changelog release 3.0.2, then we use the semver you provided.

You can also add the --with-npm flag, this will:

• Run git add <changelog-file.md> && git commit -m "update changelog"
• Run npm version <version>
  • This will update the package.json file with the new version
  • This will also create a git tag