Gitlab Release Note Generator

A Gitlab release note generator that generates release note on latest tag

Feature

• Generate release note on the latest tag based on merge requests and issues

• Distinguished title with issues or merge requests that have the following labels: enhancement, breaking change, feature and bug

  (Note. if an issue or merge request that has 2 or more labels, that issue or merge request will be displayed again under the corresponding title)

• Can be integrated as a CD service. Tutorial below

How it works

1. Find the latest tag
2. Find the previous tag that is on the same branch as the latest tag.
3. Locate the date range between the latest and the previous tag. If there is only a tag in the project, then the from date will be the project creation date and the to date will be that tag's creation date.
4. Find all Merged merge requests and Closed issues within that time range
5. Generate a release note/changelog based on the findings above.

Software requirement

• NodeJS ^10.x.x OR docker
• A gitlab personal access token with api permission. How to Tutorial

How to run this app

Docker method

docker container run -e GITLAB_PERSONAL_TOKEN=gitlabSampleToken -e GITLAB_PROJECT_ID=12345678 -e TARGET_BRANCH=sampleTargetBranch -e TARGET_TAG_REGEX=sampleRegex 00freezy00/gitlab-release-note-generator

Nodejs Method

• Fill in the parameters mainly GITLAB_PERSONAL_TOKEN, GITLAB_PROJECT_ID, TARGET_BRANCH(optional. Use it only if you want to find tags in the same specific branch) and TARGET_TAG_REGEX (optional. Can use it to distinguish master or develop branch version bump) in app/env.js or feed it in process.env through npm
• npm install
• npm start
• After couple seconds, latest tag should have a release note

Gitlab CI method

1. Need to pass in gitlab personal access token as a CI variable

2. c/p the .sample.gitlab-ci.yml to your gitlab ci.

   What's included in the sample gitlab CI script

   • generate-release-note job. Generates a release note on the tag after detecting tag push with this regex /^[0-9]+.[0-9]+.[0-9]+(-[0-9]+)?$/
   • tag-after-deployment job (optional). Tag the commit that contains a version bump with this regex /^[0-9]+.[0-9]+.[0-9]+(-[0-9]+)?$/. Require ssh key to work.

3. Customise the gitlab ci script to your need

Reference gitlab repo: generator test

TODO:

Feature

• Release notes generation on selected tag
• Customise template for the release note

Credits

Thanks to github-changelog-generator for inspiring me to make this app. Sorry, I couldn't wait any longer for that gitlab feature to be merged in.