changelog2html

Yet another changelog tool which uses git to build a html changelog.

Description

The changelog will be generated using a set of changelog files. Each change will be documented in its own changelog file which has a unique filename:

• 7b1f1e4e-1dcf-11e6-b6ba-3e1d05defe79.bugfix.md
• 8b1f1e4e-1dcf-11e6-b6ba-3e1d05defe78.bugfix.md

The files can be added at any time during your development process but i suggest that you add them in combination with your changes.

The changelog2html tool will iterate over these files and determine which git tag effectively introduced each file. This way a release tag can automatically be linked to each file and thus a version can be assigned to each change. Using this information a swig template will be used to render the changelog. The changelog content must be markdown. A markdown parser will convert the content to html.

The main advantage is that you avoid having conflicts since each change has its own change file. Additionally the changelog is decoupled from the SCM log and thus a enduser friendly changelog can be maintained.

TL;DR

• Create a new changelog file with the name pattern [uuid].[changetype].md in your changes folder within your git project.
• Describe your change within that file. I suggest to write a styleguide for other developers.
• Once you are happy with your release create regular release and tag your sources using git
• Run changelog2html over your changelog folder to generate your html changelog file
• Publish the generated changelog.html file somewhere
• Done

Install

$ npm install changelog2html -g
$ changelog2html 

  Usage: changelog2html [options] [Changelog folder]

  Options:

    -h, --help                 output usage information
    -V, --version              output the version number
    -t, --template [template]  Filename of the custom swig template
    -o, --output [output]      HTML output file

$ changelog2html -t template.html -o build/changelog.html changes

Library usage

changelog = require('changelog2html');
let templateFile = "template.html";
let pathToChangesFolder = "changes";
changelog(templateFile, pathToChangesFolder).then(function(result) {
  console.log(result);
});

Example template:

<h1>{{ pagename|title }}</h1>
<ul>
{% for versionTag, version in versions %}
    <li><h2>{{versionTag}} - {{version.date|date('F jS, Y') }}</h2>
        <p>
            <ul>
                {% for change in version.changes %}
                <li>
                    <h2>{{change.type}} - {{change.tag}} - {{change.date|date('F jS, Y') }}</h2>
                    <p>{{change.contentRendered|safe}}</p>
                </li>
                {% endfor %}
            </ul>
        </p>
    </li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>