Conventional Changelog action

This action will bump version, tag commit and generate a changelog with conventional commits.

Inputs

• Optional github-token: Github token, if different permissions required than from checkout.
• Optional git-message: Commit message that is used when committing the changelog.
• Optional git-user-name: The git user.name to use for the commit. Default Conventional Changelog Action
• Optional git-user-email: The git user.email to use for the commit. Default [email protected]
• Optional git-pull-method: The git pull method used when pulling all changes from remote. Default --ff-only
• Optional git-push: Push all the GIT changes. Default true
• Optional git-branch: The branch used to push. Default is the current branch (${{ github.ref }})
• Optional git-url: Git repository domain. Default is github.com
• Optional git-path: Path filter for the logs and version. If set, only commits that match the path filter will be considered. By default, we won't use this feature(empty string).
• Optional preset: Preset that is used from conventional commits. Default is angular (learn more about presets here)
• Optional tag-prefix: Prefix for the git tags. Default v.
• Optional input-file: Read the changelog from this file. This will prepend the newly generated changelogs to the file's content.
• Optional output-file: File to output the changelog to. Default CHANGELOG.md, when providing 'false' no file will be generated / updated.
• Optional release-count: Number of releases to preserve in changelog. Default 5, use 0 to regenerate all. This input has no effect if input-file is used.
• Optional version-file: The path to the file that contains the version to bump (supports comma-separated list of file paths). Default ./package.json. Other supported formats are mix.exs, .toml, .yml, .yaml, and .json.
• Optional version-path: The place inside the version file to bump. Default version.
• Optional skip-git-pull: Do not pull the repo before tagging. Ensure you full cloned the repo in the first place to get tags. Default 'false'.
• Optional skip-on-empty: Boolean to specify if you want to skip empty release (no-changelog generated). This case occurred when you push chore commit with angular for example. Default 'true'.
• Optional skip-version-file: Do not update the version file. Default 'false'.
• Optional skip-commit: Do not create a release commit. Default 'false'.
• Optional skip-tag: Do not tag the release. Helpful for using action to check if a release is going to be made. Default 'false'.
• Optional pre-commit: Path to the pre-commit script file. No hook by default.
• Optional fallback-version: The fallback version, if no older one can be detected, or if it is the first one. Default '0.1.0'. If pre-releaseis set to true it will default to the configured pre-release format (i.e. '0.1.0-rc.0')
• Optional config-file-path: Path to the conventional changelog config file. If set, the preset setting will be ignored
• Optional pre-changelog-generation: Path to the pre-changelog-generation script file. No hook by default.
• Optional skip-ci: Adds instruction to Github to not consider the push something to rebuild. Default true.
• Optional create-summary: Adds the generated changelog as Action Summary. Default false.
• Optional pre-release: Marks the release as pre-release. Default false.
• Optional pre-release-identifier: The identifier to use for the pre-release. Default rc.
• Optional skip-bump: Prevents the action from bumping the version.

Presets

This action comes pre-compiled with the angular (default) and conventionalcommits, if you wish to use an other preset you need to make sure it's installed with npm install conventional-changelog-<preset name>

Pre-Commit hook

Function in a specified file will be run right before the git-add-git-commit phase, when the next version is already known and a new changelog has been generated. You can run any chores across your repository that should be added and committed with the release commit.

Specified path could be relative or absolute. If it is relative, then it will be based on the GITHUB_WORKSPACE path.

Script should:

• be a CommonJS module
• have a single export: exports.preCommit = (props) => { /* ... */ }
• not have any return value
• be bundled (contain all dependencies in itself, just like the bundled webapp)

preCommit function can be async.

Following props will be passed to the function as a single parameter:

interface Props {
  tag: string; // Next tag e.g. v1.12.3
  version: string; // Next version e.g. 1.12.3
}

export function preCommit(props: Props): void {}

A bunch of useful environment variables are available to the script with process.env. See docs.github.com/en/actions/configuring-and-managing-workflows/using-environment-variables to learn more.

Pre-Changelog-Generation hook

Function in a specified file will be run right before the changelog generation phase, when the next version is already known, but it was not used anywhere yet. It can be useful if you want to manually update version or tag.

Same restrictions as for the pre-commit hook, but exported functions names should be preVersionGeneration for modifications to the version and preTagGeneration for modifications to the git tag.

Following props will be passed to the function as a single parameter and same output is expected:

// Next version e.g. 1.12.3
export function preVersionGeneration(version: string): string {}

// Next tag e.g. v1.12.3
export function preTagGeneration(tag: string): string {}

Config-File-Path

A config file to define the conventional commit settings. Use it if you need to override values like issuePrefix or issueUrlFormat. If you set a config-file-path, the preset setting will be ignored. Therefore use an existing config and override the values you want to adjust.

example:

'use strict'
const config = require('conventional-changelog-conventionalcommits');

module.exports = config({
    "issuePrefixes": ["TN-"],
    "issueUrlFormat": "https://jira.example.com/browse/{{prefix}}{{id}}"
})

The specified path can be relative or absolute. If it is relative, then it will be based on the GITHUB_WORKSPACE path.

Make sure to install all required packages in the workflow before executing this action.

Outputs

• changelog: The generated changelog for the new version.
• clean_changelog: The generated changelog for the new version without the version name in it (Better for Github releases)
• version: The new version.
• tag: The name of the generated tag.
• skipped: Boolean ('true' or 'false') specifying if this step have been skipped

Example usages

Uses all the defaults

permissions:
  contents: write

- name: Conventional Changelog Action
  uses: TriPSs/conventional-changelog-action@v5
  with:
    github-token: ${{ secrets.github_token }}

Write permissions are required in order to enable git push when a new version is generated. In some configurations, the default secrets.github_token may not have the correct permissions. You can check your default permissions by looking at "Set up job" section of your GitHub action run log.

Overwrite everything

- name: Conventional Changelog Action
  uses: TriPSs/conventional-changelog-action@v5
  with:
    github-token: ${{ secrets.github_token }}
    git-message: 'chore(release): {version}'
    git-user-name: 'Awesome Changelog Action'
    git-user-email: '[email protected]'
    preset: 'angular'
    tag-prefix: 'v'
    output-file: 'MY_CUSTOM_CHANGELOG.md'
    release-count: '10'
    version-file: './my_custom_version_file.json' // or .yml, .yaml, .toml, mix.exs
    version-path: 'path.to.version'
    skip-on-empty: 'false'
    skip-version-file: 'false'
    skip-commit: 'false'
    git-branch: 'my-maintenance-branch'

No file changelog

- name: Conventional Changelog Action
  uses: TriPSs/conventional-changelog-action@v5
  with:
    github-token: ${{ secrets.github_token }}
    output-file: "false"

Tag only

- name: Conventional Changelog Action
  uses: TriPSs/conventional-changelog-action@v5
  with:
    github-token: ${{ secrets.github_token }}
    skip-commit: "true"

Skip Git Pull In CI you might not want to pull extra changes before tagging e.g. if running a long build before tagging, another commit may have come into the branch which would get pulled leading to tagging a different commit to the one which was built.

- name: Checkout repository
  uses: actions/checkout@v4
  with:
    fetch-depth: 0

- name: Conventional Changelog Action
  uses: TriPSs/conventional-changelog-action@v5
  with:
    github-token: ${{ secrets.github_token }}
    skip-git-pull: "true"

Use a custom file for versioning

- name: Conventional Changelog Action
  uses: TriPSs/conventional-changelog-action@v5
  with:
    github-token: ${{ secrets.github_token }}
    version-file: "my-custom-file.yaml"

Use a pre-commit hook

- name: Conventional Changelog Action
  uses: TriPSs/conventional-changelog-action@v5
  with:
    github-token: ${{ secrets.github_token }}
    pre-commit: some/path/pre-commit.js

Github releases

- name: Conventional Changelog Action
  id: changelog
  uses: TriPSs/conventional-changelog-action@v5
  with:
    github-token: ${{ secrets.github_token }}
    output-file: "false"

- name: Create Release
  uses: actions/create-release@v1
  if: ${{ steps.changelog.outputs.skipped == 'false' }}
  env:
    GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.github_token }}
  with:
    tag_name: ${{ steps.changelog.outputs.tag }}
    release_name: ${{ steps.changelog.outputs.tag }}
    body: ${{ steps.changelog.outputs.clean_changelog }}

Use a deploy key

If you want to trigger another GitHub action based on pushed tag, you can use Deploy Key, To make full use of the Deploy Key, you must set the value of github-token input to empty string.

- name: Checkout GitHub Action
  uses: actions/checkout@v4
  with:
    ssh-key: ${{ secrets.SSH_DEPLOY_KEY }}
- name: Conventional Changelog Action
  id: changelog
  uses: TriPSs/conventional-changelog-action@v5
  with:
    github-token: ""

Development

If you'd like to contribute to this project, all you need to do is clone and install act this project and run:

Note: The image used is 18 gb!

$ npm install

# To run / test one specific job
$ act -j <workflow job name> -P ubuntu-latest=ghcr.io/catthehacker/ubuntu:act-22.04 --quiet
# Example
$ act -j test-json -P ubuntu-latest=ghcr.io/catthehacker/ubuntu:act-22.04 --quiet

# To run all tests
$ act pull_request -P ubuntu-latest=ghcr.io/catthehacker/ubuntu:act-22.04 --quiet

License

Conventional Changelog Action is MIT licensed.

Collaboration

If you have questions or issues, please open an issue!