gitchangelog

Use your commit log to make beautifull and configurable changelog file.

Feature

fully driven by a config file that can be tailored with your changelog policies. (see for example the reference configuration file)
filter out commits/tags based on regexp matching
refactor commit summary, or commit body on the fly with replace regexp
classify commit message into sections (ie: New, Fix, Changes...)
any output format supported thanks to templating, you can even choose your own preferred template engine (mako, mustache, full python ...).
support your merge or rebase workflows and complicated git histories
support full or incremental changelog generation to match your needs.
support easy access to trailers key values (if you use them)
support of multi-authors for one commit through Co-Authored-By trailers key values
support standard python installation or dep-free single executable. (this last feature is not yet completely pain free to use on Windows)

Requirements

gitchangelog is compatible Python 2 and Python 3 on Linux/BSD/MacOSX and Windows.

Please submit an issue if you encounter incompatibilities.

Installation

full package

Gitchangelog is published on PyPI, thus:

pip install gitchangelog

.. is the way to go for install the full package on any platform.

If you are installing from source, please note that the development tools are not working fully yet on Windows.

The full package provides the gitchangelog.py executable as long as:

a reference configuration file that provides system wide defaults for all values.
some example templates in mustache and mako templating engine's language. Ideal to bootstrap your variations.

from source

If you'd rather work from the source repository, it supports the common idiom to install it on your system:

python setup.py install

Note that for linux/BSD, there's a link to the executable in the root of the source. This can be a convenient way to work on the source version.

single executable installation

The file gitchangelog.py is a full blown executable and can be used without any other files. This is easier to use naturally on Linux/BSD systems. For instance, you could type in:

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vaab/gitchangelog/master/src/gitchangelog/gitchangelog.py > /usr/local/bin/gitchangelog &&
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/gitchangelog

It'll install gitchangelog to be accessible for all users and will use the default python interpreter of your running session.

Please note: if you choose to install it in this standalone mode, then you must make sure to value at least all the required configuration keys in your config file. As a good start you should probably copy the reference configuration file as you base configuration file.

This is due to the fact that gitchangelog can not anymore reach the reference configuration file to get default values.

Sample

The default output is ReSTructured text, so it should be readable in ASCII.

Here is a small sample of the gitchangelog changelog at work.

Current git log output so you can get an idea of the log history:

* 59f902a Valentin Lab new: dev: sections in changelog are now in the order given in ``gitchangelog.rc`` in the ``section_regexps`` option.  (0.1.2)
* c6f72cc Valentin Lab chg: dev: commented code to toggle doctest mode.
* a9c38f3 Valentin Lab fix: dev: doctests were failing on this.
* 59524e6 Valentin Lab new: usr: added ``body_split_regexp`` option to attempts to format correctly body of commit.
* 5883f07 Valentin Lab new: usr: use a list of tuple instead of a dict for ``section_regexps`` to be able to manage order between section on find match.
* 7c1d480 Valentin Lab new: dev: new ``unreleased_version_label`` option in ``gitchangelog.rc`` to change label of not yet released code.
* cf29c9c Valentin Lab fix: dev: bad sorting of tags (alphanumerical). Changed to commit date sort.
* 61d8f80 Valentin Lab fix: dev: support of empty commit message.
* eeca31b Valentin Lab new: dev: use ``gitchangelog`` section in ``git config`` world appropriately.
* 6142b71 Valentin Lab chg: dev: cosmetic removal of trailing whitespaces
* 3c3edd5 Valentin Lab fix: usr: ``git`` in later versions seems to fail on ``git config <key>`` with errlvl 255, that was not supported.
* 3f9617d Valentin Lab fix: usr: removed Traceback when there were no tags at all in the current git repository.
* e0db9ae Valentin Lab new: usr: added section classifiers (ie: New, Change, Bugs) and updated the sample rc file.  (0.1.1)
* 0c66d59 Valentin Lab fix: dev: Fixed case where exception was thrown if two tags are on the same commit.
* d2fae0d Valentin Lab new: usr: added a succint ``--help`` support.

And here is the gitchangelog output:

0.1.2 (2011-05-17)
------------------

New
~~~
- Sections in changelog are now in the order given in ``git-
  changelog.rc`` in the ``section_regexps`` option. [Valentin Lab]
- Added ``body_split_regexp`` option to attempts to format correctly
  body of commit. [Valentin Lab]
- Use a list of tuple instead of a dict for ``section_regexps`` to be
  able to manage order between section on find match. [Valentin Lab]
- New ``unreleased_version_label`` option in ``gitchangelog.rc`` to
  change label of not yet released code. [Valentin Lab]
- Use ``gitchangelog`` section in ``git config`` world appropriately.
  [Valentin Lab]

Changes
~~~~~~~
- Commented code to toggle doctest mode. [Valentin Lab]
- Cosmetic removal of trailing whitespaces. [Valentin Lab]

Fix
~~~
- Doctests were failing on this. [Valentin Lab]
- Bad sorting of tags (alphanumerical). Changed to commit date sort.
  [Valentin Lab]
- Support of empty commit message. [Valentin Lab]
- ``git`` in later versions seems to fail on ``git config <key>`` with
  errlvl 255, that was not supported. [Valentin Lab]
- Removed Traceback when there were no tags at all in the current git
  repository. [Valentin Lab]


0.1.1 (2011-04-07)
------------------

New
~~~
- Added section classifiers (ie: New, Change, Bugs) and updated the
  sample rc file. [Valentin Lab]
- Added a succint ``--help`` support. [Valentin Lab]

Fix
~~~
- Fixed case where exception was thrown if two tags are on the same
  commit. [Valentin Lab]

And the rendered full result is directly used to generate the HTML webpage of the changelog of the PyPI page.

Usage

The reference configuration file is delivered within gitchangelog package and is used to provides defaults to settings. If you didn't install the package and used the standalone file, then chances are that gitchangelog can't access these defaults values. This is not a problem as long as you provided all the required values in your config file.

The recommended location for gitchangelog config file is the root of the current git repository with the name .gitchangelog.rc. However you could put it elsewhere, and here are the locations checked (first match will prevail):

in the path given thanks to the environment variable GITCHANGELOG_CONFIG_FILENAME
in the path stored in git config's entry gitchangelog.rc-path (which could be stored in system location or per repository)
(RECOMMENDED) in the root of the current git repository with the name .gitchangelog.rc

Then, you'll be able to call gitchangelog in a GIT repository and it'll print changelog on its standard output.

Configuration file format

The reference configuration file is quite heavily commented and is quite simple. You should be able to use it as required.

The changelog of gitchangelog is generated with himself and with the reference configuration file. You'll see the output in the changelog of the PyPI page.

Output Engines

At the end of the configuration file, you'll notice a variable called output_engine. By default, it's set to rest_py, which is the legacy python engine to produce the ReSTructured Text output format that is shown in above samples. If this engine fits your needs, you won't need to fiddle with this option.

To render the template, gitchangelog will generate a data structure that will then be rendered thanks to the output engine. This should help you get the exact output that you need.

As people might have different needs and knowledge, a templating system using mustache is available. mustache templates are provided to render both ReSTructured Text or markdown formats. If you know mustache templating, then you could easily add or modify these existing templates.

A mako templating engine is also provided. You'll find also a mako template producing the same ReSTructured Text output than the legacy one. It's provided for reference and/or further tweak if you would rather use mako templates.

Mustache

The mustache output engine uses mustache templates.

The mustache templates are powered via pystache the python implementation of the mustache specifications. So mustache output engine will only be available if you have pystache module available in your python environment.

There are mustache templates bundled with the default installation of gitchangelog. These can be called by providing a simple label to the mustache(..) output_engine, for instance (in your .gitchangelog.rc):

output_engine = mustache("markdown")

Or you could provide your own mustache template by specifying an absolute path (or a relative one, starting from the git toplevel of your project by default, or if set, the git config gitchangelog.template-path location) to your template file, for instance:

output_engine = mustache(".gitchangelog.tpl")

And feel free to copy the bundled templates to use them as bases for your own variations. In the source code, these are located in src/gitchangelog/templates/mustache directory, once installed they are in templates/mustache directory starting from where your gitchangelog.py was installed.

Mako

The makotemplate output engine templates for gitchangelog are powered via mako python templating system. So mako output engine will only be available if you have mako module available in your python environment.

There are mako templates bundled with the default installation of gitchangelog. These can be called by providing a simple label to the makotemplate(..) output_engine, for instance (in your .gitchangelog.rc):

output_engine = makotemplate("markdown")

output_engine = makotemplate(".gitchangelog.tpl")

And feel free to copy the bundled templates to use them as bases for your own variations. In the source code, these are located in src/gitchangelog/templates/mako directory, once installed they are in templates/mako directory starting from where your gitchangelog.py was installed.

Changelog data tree

This is a sample of the current data structure sent to output engines:

{'title': 'Changelog',
 'versions': [{'label': '%%version%% (unreleased)',
               'date': None,
               'tag': None
               'sections': [{'label': 'Changes',
                             'commits': [{'author': 'John doe',
                                          'body': '',
                                          'subject': 'Adding some extra values.'},
                                         {'author': 'John Doe',
                                          'body': '',
                                          'subject': 'Some more changes'}]},
                            {'label': 'Other',
                             'commits': [{'author': 'Jim Foo',
                                          'body': '',
                                          'subject': 'classic modification'},
                                         {'author': 'Jane Done',
                                          'body': '',
                                          'subject': 'Adding some stuff to do.'}]}]},
              {'label': 'v0.2.5 (2013-08-06)',
               'date': '2013-08-06',
               'tag': 'v0.2.5'
               'sections': [{'commits': [{'author': 'John Doe',
                                          'body': '',
                                          'subject': 'Updating Changelog installation.'}],
                             'label': 'Changes'}]}]}

Merged branches history support

Commit attribution to a specific version could be tricky. Suppose you have this typical merge tree (spot the tags!):

* new: something  (HEAD, tag: 0.2, develop)
*   Merge tag '0.1.1' into develop
|\
| * fix: out-of-band hotfix  (tag: 0.1.1)
* | chg: continued development
|/
* fix: something  (tag: 0.1)
* first commit  (tag: 0.0.1, master)

Here's a minimal draft of gitchangelog to show how commit are attributed to versions:

0.2
  * new: something.
  * Merge tag '0.1.1' into develop.
  * chg: continued development.

0.1.1
  * fix: out-of-band hotfix.

0.1
  * fix: something.

Note

you can remove automatically all merge commit from gitchangelog output by using include_merge = False in the .gitchangelog.rc file.

Use cases

No sectionning

If you want to remove sectionning but keep anything else, you should probably use:

section_regexps = [
    ('', None)
]

subject_process = (strip | ucfirst | final_dot)

This will disable sectionning and won't remove the prefixes used for sectionning from the commit's summary.

Incremental changelog

Also known as partial changelog generation, this feature allows to generate only a subpart of your changelog, and combined with configurable publishing actions, you can insert the result inside an existing changelog. Usually this makes sense:

When wanting to switch to gitchangelog, or change your conventions:
- part of your history is not following conventions.
- you have a previous CHANGELOG you want to blend in.
You'd rather commit changes to your changelog file for each release:
- For performance reason, you can then generate changelog only for the new commit and save the result.
- Because you want to be able to edit it to make some minor edition if needed.

Generating partial changelog is as simple as gitchangelog REVLIST. Examples follows:

## will output only tags between 0.0.2 (excluded) and 0.0.3 (included)
gitchangelog 0.0.2..0.0.3

## will output only tags since 0.0.3 (excluded)
gitchangelog ^0.0.3 HEAD

## will output all tags up to 0.0.3 (included)
gitchangelog 0.0.3

Additionally, gitchangelog can figure out automatically which revision is the last for you (with some little help). This is done by specifying the revs config option. This config file option will be used as if specified on the command line.

Here is an example that fits the current changelog format:

revs = [
    Caret(
        FileFirstRegexMatch(
            "CHANGELOG.rst",
            r"(?P<rev>[0-9]+\.[0-9]+(\.[0-9]+))\s+\([0-9]+-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}\)\n--+\n")),
]

This will look into the file CHANGELOG.rst for the first match of the given regex and return the match of the rev regex sub-pattern it as a string. The Caret function will simply prefix the given string with a ^. As a consequence, this code will prevent recreating any previously generated changelog section (more information about the REVLIST syntax from git rev-list arguments.)

Note that the data structure provided to the template will set the title to None if you provided no REVLIST through command-line or the config file (or if the revlist was equivalently set to ["HEAD", ]). This a good way to make your template detect it is in "incremental mode".

By default, this will only output to standard output the new sections of your changelog, you might want to insert it directly in your existing changelog. This is where publish parameters will help you. By default it is set to stdout, and you might want to set it to:

publish = FileInsertIntoFirstRegexMatch(
    "CHANGELOG.rst",
    r'/(?P<rev>[0-9]+\.[0-9]+(\.[0-9]+)?)\s+\([0-9]+-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}\)\n--+\n/',
    idx=lambda m: m.start(1)
)

The full recipe could be:

OUTPUT_FILE = "CHANGELOG.rst"
INSERT_POINT = r"\b(?P<rev>[0-9]+\.[0-9]+)\s+\([0-9]+-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}\)\n--+\n"
revs = [
        Caret(FileFirstRegexMatch(OUTPUT_FILE, INSERT_POINT)),
        "HEAD"
]

action = FileInsertAtFirstRegexMatch(
    OUTPUT_FILE, INSERT_POINT,
    idx=lambda m: m.start(1)
)

Alternatively, you can use this other recipe, using FileRegexSubst, that has the added advantage of being able to update the unreleased part if you had it already generated and need a re-fresh because you added new commits or amended some commits:

OUTPUT_FILE = "CHANGELOG.rst"
INSERT_POINT_REGEX = r'''(?isxu)
^
(
  \s*Changelog\s*(\n|\r\n|\r)        ## ``Changelog`` line
  ==+\s*(\n|\r\n|\r){2}              ## ``=========`` rest underline
)

(                     ## Match all between changelog and release rev
    (
      (?!
         (?<=(\n|\r))                ## look back for newline
         %(rev)s                     ## revision
         \s+
         \([0-9]+-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}\)(\n|\r\n|\r)   ## date
           --+(\n|\r\n|\r)                          ## ``---`` underline
      )
      .
    )*
)

(?P<rev>%(rev)s)
''' % {'rev': r"[0-9]+\.[0-9]+(\.[0-9]+)?"}

revs = [
    Caret(FileFirstRegexMatch(OUTPUT_FILE, INSERT_POINT_REGEX)),
    "HEAD"
]

publish = FileRegexSubst(OUTPUT_FILE, INSERT_POINT_REGEX, r"\1\o\g<rev>")

As a second example, here is the same recipe for mustache markdown format:

OUTPUT_FILE = "CHANGELOG.rst"
INSERT_POINT_REGEX = r'''(?isxu)
^
(
  \s*\#\s+Changelog\s*(\n|\r\n|\r)        ## ``Changelog`` line
)

(                     ## Match all between changelog and release rev
    (
      (?!
         (?<=(\n|\r))                ## look back for newline
         \#\#\s+%(rev)s                     ## revision
         \s+
         \([0-9]+-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}\)(\n|\r\n|\r)   ## date
      )
      .
    )*
)

(?P<tail>\#\#\s+(?P<rev>%(rev)s))
''' % {'rev': r"[0-9]+\.[0-9]+(\.[0-9]+)?"}

revs = [
    Caret(FileFirstRegexMatch(OUTPUT_FILE, INSERT_POINT_REGEX)),
    "HEAD"
]

publish = FileRegexSubst(OUTPUT_FILE, INSERT_POINT_REGEX, r"\1\o\n\g<tail>")

Contributing

Any suggestion or issue is welcome. Push request are very welcome, please check out the guidelines.

Push Request Guidelines

You can send any code. I'll look at it and will integrate it myself in the code base while leaving you as the commit(s) author. This process can take time and it'll take less time if you follow the following guidelines:

check your code with PEP8 or pylint. Try to stick to 80 columns wide.
separate your commits per smallest concern
each functionality/bugfix commit should contain the code, tests, and doc.
each commit should pass the tests (to allow easy bisect)
prior minor commit with typographic or code cosmetic changes are very welcome. These should be tagged in their commit summary with !minor.
the commit message should follow gitchangelog rules (check the git log to get examples)
if the commit fixes an issue or finished the implementation of a feature, please mention it in the summary.

If you have some questions about guidelines which is not answered here, please check the current git log, you might find previous commit that would show you how to deal with your issue. Otherwise, just send your PR and ask your question. I won't bite. Promise.

License

Licensed under the BSD License.

vaab/gitchangelog

vaab

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