improvement: automate changelog management

[barryib]

PR o'clock

Description

This is a first draft to get feedbacks. There are still some questions about:

• How to manage old changelog ? Put it in the template ?
• How can I skip new release commits (or "update changelog") in the changelog ? Use skip/changelog commit prefix ?
• Ho to ensure that PR titles follow gidelines ? Use something like https:/apps/semantic-pull-requests ?

cc @max-rocket-internet @antonbabenko @js-timbirkett

Resolves #781

Todo

• Manage old changelog (Should be added in template ?)
• Avoid adding "Update changelog" or new release commits in the changelog
• Tests to ensure that no one modify the changelog in PRs (don't know yet how to comment back to the PR)
• Use https:/apps/semantic-pull-requests (config ok, have to add the github app)
• Update contribution guide

[barryib]

@antonbabenko @js-timbirkett With your experience with git-chglog, do you have any advice for these questions ?

• How to manage old changelog ? Put it in the template ?
• How can I skip new release commits (or "update changelog") in the changelog ? Use skip/changelog commit prefix ?
• Ho to ensure that PR titles follow gidelines ? Use something like https:/apps/semantic-pull-requests ?

[antonbabenko]

I don't have a lot of advanced experience with git-chglog but here are my thoughts:

1. I would put the current changelog into changelog-before-10.md or something like that, and use the tool for the whole changelog creation with the default template.
2. Maybe we can amend git commits, but I am not sure how to do this for various scenarios. I agree that it does not look nice to have that one commit every time, but I don't know a good solution.
3. We can enable that GitHub app to give it a try and see what happens.

[barryib]

How to manage old changelog ? Put it in the template ?

I've wrote a small makefile which generate changelog with git-chglog and replace <!-- BEGIN GIT-CHGLOG --><!-- END GIT-CHGLOG --> in the changelog file.

[barryib]

@max-rocket-internet @antonbabenko So far here are my feebacks and propositions:

• How to manage old changelog ? Put it in the template ?

I use placeholders in the CHANGELOG.md file and replace it with the generated changelog from git tag v10.0.0

• How can I skip new release commits (or "update changelog") in the changelog ? Use skip/changelog commit prefix ?

Using skip as PR or commit prefix and I don't catch them in git-chglog configuration.

• Ho to ensure that PR titles follow gidelines ? Use something like https:/apps/semantic-pull-requests ?

I'll try this bot during the weekend.

Tests to ensure that no one modify the changelog in PRs

For now I don't know why, but unsplash/comment-on-pr@master is failling to add comments to the PR. Sounds like the secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN doesn't have permission for comment 🤔 .

[barryib]

@max-rocket-internet After some discussions with @antonbabenko, we decided to move the old changelog into a different file. So the CHANGELOG.md will contain every release notes from v11.0.0 and will be generated from git commits. Are you ok with that ?

[github-actions]

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