A changelog generator for GitHub Issues, available as a release jar or for use as a GitHub Action.
The changelog generator requires Java 17 or later. To generate a markdown changelog using a release jar, follow these steps:
-
Download a release jar.
-
Run
java -jar github-changelog-generator.jar <milestone-title> <changelog-file> --changelog.repository=<org>/<name>
To increase GitHub’s rate limits, you can also use --github-token=<token> to provide an access token that is used for authentication.
For more advanced configuration options, see below.
-
changelog-file: Path of the file to which the changelog should be written. Defaults tochangelog.md -
config-file: Path to a changelog generator configuration file, relative toGITHUB_WORKSPACE. See below for details of the advanced options that can be configured using this file. -
repository: Repository for which a changelog should be generated. Defaults to the workflow’s repository. -
token: Token for authentication with GitHub. Authenticating increases GitHub rate limits.
A YAML configuration file can be used to provide more complex configuration, either when running as a release jar or as a GitHub action.
By default, the changelog will contain the following sections:
| Title | Label Text |
|---|---|
":star: New Features" |
"enhancement" |
":lady_beetle: Bug Fixes" |
"regression" or "bug" |
":notebook_with_decorative_cover: Documentation" |
"documentation" |
":hammer: Dependency Upgrades" |
"dependency-upgrade" |
The title is in Markdown format and emoji like ":star:" can be used.
If you want something different then you can add sections YAML:
changelog:
sections:
- title: "Enhancements"
labels: ["new"]
- title: "Bugs"
labels: ["fix"]By default, adding sections will replace the default sections. To add sections after the defaults, add the following configuration:
changelog:
add-sections: trueYou can also customize the contributors title using the following:
changelog:
contributors:
title: "Contributors"You can add external links such as release notes for quick access using the following:
changelog:
external_links:
- name: "Release Notes"
location: "https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/wiki/Spring-Boot-2.3-Release-Notes"Unless otherwise configured, issues will only appear in the first matching section.
For example, if you have an issue labeled with enhancement and documentation then it will only appear in the "New Features" section.
If you want an issue to appear in multiple sections, use the group property.
Groups allow you to create logical groupings of related sections.
An issue may only appear once in any given group.
For example, you might define the following:
changelog:
sections:
- title: "Highlights"
labels: ["noteworthy"]
group: "highlights"
- title: "Enhancements"
labels: ["new"]
- title: "Bugs"
labels: ["fix"]This will create two distinct groups, "highlights" and "default" (which is used if no group property is specified).
An issue labeled with new and noteworthy will appear in both the "Highlights" and "Enhancements" section.
Issues and pull requests can be excluded from the changelog by configuring exclusions.
You can ignore all items that have certain labels using changelog.issues.exclude.labels.
For example:
changelog:
issues:
exclude:
labels: ["wontfix", "question", "duplicate", "invalid"]If you have contributors that you don’t want to thank (perhaps core team members or bots), you can set the following:
changelog:
contributors:
exclude:
names: ["dependabot"]You can also use * if you want to drop the contributors section entirely.
By default, issues are sorted by their "created" date.
If you want to order them by title instead you can set changelog.issues.sort to title.
It’s also set the property on section configuration if you want ordering per section:
changelog:
sections:
- title: "Bugs"
labels: ["bug"]
- title: "Dependency Upgrades"
labels: ["dependency"]
sort: "title"If an issue is forward-ported or backward-ported between milestones, you might have separate issues in each milestone that reference the original issue. To credit a contributor in the changelog for every milestone that includes a forward or backward port of the issue that was resolved, configure the labels that are used to identify ported issues. The body of a ported issue should contain a comment with a reference to the original issue, which is extracted using a regular expression with exactly one capture group for the original issue number.
changelog:
issues:
ports:
- label: "status: forward-port"
bodyExpression: 'Forward port of issue #(\d+).*'
- label: "status: backport"
bodyExpression: 'Back port of issue #(\d+).*'This project is Open Source software released under the Apache 2.0 license.