Node Auto-Changelog

> node-autochglog is a CLI tool that generates a changelog based on commit messages, assuming that they're written using the Conventional Commits syntax. It is meant to be used in CI/CD pipelines, or in pre-commit hooks.

Data model

Here are some concepts to better understand the logic behind the tool:

- to the purpose of this tool, a Changelog is a list of Release items;
- each Release item contains a list of Category items;
- each Category item contains a list of Commit items.

In other words, a _changelog_ is a list of _releases_, each _release_ contains a number of _commits_, that are arranged in _categories_ within the _release_ they belong to.

_Releases_ are defined by git tags, _categories_ are defined by Conventional Commit prefixes of _commit_ messages.

Installation

node-autochglog can be launched through npx, so no installation is required. If you still want to install it, this section explains how to do that.

For making it available within a project:

``bash
npm install save-dev node-autochglog
`

For making it available globally:

`bash
npm install -g node-autochglog
`

Usage

In order to use node-autochglog, just run the following command in the root of the project you want to generate a changelog for:

`bash
npx node-autochglog
`

Configuration

The tool accepts configuration from a node-autochglog.config.json, expected to be found in the directory where the node-autochglog command is executed; the file is expected to contain a single JSON object adhering to the NodeAutoChglogConfig interface:

`typescript
export interface NodeAutoChglogConfig {
tagFilter: string;
initialTag: string;
templateLocation: string;
targetBranch: string;
outputFilepath: string;
allowedCategories: { key: string; label?: string }[];
stripPRNumbers: boolean;
}
``

{
  "key": "feat",
  "label": "Features"
},
{
  "key": "refactor",
  "label": "Refactoring"
},
{
  "key": "ci",
  "label": "Integration"
},
{
  "key": "fix",
  "label": "Fixes"
}