@firefoxic/update-changelog

CLI utility for automatic update of CHANGELOG.md.

Purpose

Increasing the version of a package usually requires creating a commit (extra for history) with a message something like Prepare release. This commit should manually add a header to CHANGELOG.md with the new version and the release date, and change the links to the comparison at the bottom of the file.

The update-changelog utility gets rid of this chore, random typos, and an unnecessary commit.

Installation

pnpm add -D @firefoxic/update-changelog

Configuration

In the scripts section of your package.json, add a version hook that will run when pnpm version patch (or minor, or major) is executed after updating the version in package.json, but before creating the commit.

{
    "scripts": {
        "version": "update-changelog"
    },
}

Optionally, other hooks can be added to conveniently automate package publishing (see package.json of this project for an example).

Some restrictions

The update-changelog expects the following:

• The name of the changelog file is CHANGELOG.md.

• The format of the changelog is consistent with Keep a changelog.

• Descriptions of all user-important changes are already in the changelog under the heading [Unreleased]. Ideally, you should commit them along with the changes themselves.

• If this is the first release of a package, there should be only one reference for [Unreleased] at the end of the changelog in the following format for correct reference updating:

  [Unreleased]: https://github.com/<user-name>/<project-name>/compare/v0.0.1...HEAD
  

  Example: the state of this project's changelog before the first release.

Usage

When publishing a new version, simply do not create the Prepare release commit.

Running pnpm version patch (or minor, or major) will now do everything for you 🥳