Feature: Changelog

[estahn]

We had multiple users ask for a changelog on the GitHub release. We use semantic-release but not sure how to wire this up.

[smlx]

related: helm/chart-releaser-action#44

not sure if this feature request belongs in the action or in cr itself.

[pratikbin]

You can give option to add body in release i.e. cr upload --release-body <file or text>, so we can add our custom one.

[thesuperzapper]

@unguiculus are you ok with a feature like cr upload --release-body <file_path>?

This will make it possible for users to store things like changelogs in the GitHub release text.

[pratikbin]

@thesuperzapper But then how can it can distinguish for which chart release will set body cause AFAIK it will check charts in CR_PACKAGE_PATH and based on that it will release multiple if there

[estahn]

Atlassian came up with an interesting approach, which they called changesets (https://github.com/atlassian/changesets). I've seen this being used in Backstage. This could solve the above issue as it will also allow recording migration strategies, e.g. structure changes in values.yaml.

[thesuperzapper]

Regardless, we still need to support some way of specifying the body of the release in chart-releaser.

I think the proposed cr upload --release-body <file_path> is a good idea.

[estahn]

@thesuperzapper I think you skipped @pratikbalar comment.

But then how can it can distinguish for which chart release will set body cause AFAIK it will check charts in CR_PACKAGE_PATH and based on that it will release multiple if there

[pratikbin]

Atlassian came up with an interesting approach, which they called changesets (https://github.com/atlassian/changesets). I've seen this being used in Backstage. This could solve the above issue as it will also allow recording migration strategies, e.g. structure changes in values.yaml.

Kindly tell us more about it if you can

[macobo]

I think we can standardize this beyond --release-body by copying e.g. dependabot for a default.

E.g.

CHART DESCRIPTION

Updates chart to version X

Commits:
Collapsible section with list of all commits since master

[chgl]

ArtifactHub introduced annotations to encode a changelog for a chart: https://artifacthub.io/docs/topics/annotations/helm/#supported-annotations

In theory, these could be parsed, prettified and set similarly to how the current implementation uses the Chart.yaml's description as the release description: https://github.com/helm/chart-releaser/blob/main/pkg/releaser/releaser.go#L322 However, this would couple the chart-releaser implementation to ArtifactHub's annotations which may not be desirable.

[aabouzaid]

This feature is really important to automate the whole workflow.

To set the release notes after the actual release I need to do a lot of kung-fu! (which is error-prone) I need to extract the updated charts and call GH API twice because even GH CLI doesn't support update release at the moment!

For that reason, I've created this PR no. #137 to add chart release-notes or changelog (without any coupling to an external source).

[ChrisKujawa]

This should be much easier now, since the github release also supports auto generate changelog
Newest version which supports this: https://github.com/google/go-github/releases/tag/v39.2.0

See blog post https://github.blog/2021-10-04-beta-github-releases-improving-release-experience/#introducing-auto-generated-release-notes

[aabouzaid]

@cpanato since the PR no. #137 is merged, the last thing to close this issue is to release a new version.
Is there an expected date/schedule for the release?

[LeoColomb]

In theory, these could be parsed, prettified and set similarly to how the current implementation uses the Chart.yaml's description as the release description: main/pkg/releaser/releaser.go#L322 However, this would couple the chart-releaser implementation to ArtifactHub's annotations which may not be desirable.

Indeed, but like the file for the release notes, I guess the annotation to use can be managed by the configuration?

[cpanato]

@aabouzaid @LeoColomb are you willing to submit a PR to contribute to some docs in how to use that?

the release will come soon, need to perform some tests

will close this issue since it is already merged to the main branch

[chgl]

In theory, these could be parsed, prettified and set similarly to how the current implementation uses the Chart.yaml's description as the release description: main/pkg/releaser/releaser.go#L322 However, this would couple the chart-releaser implementation to ArtifactHub's annotations which may not be desirable.

Indeed, but like the file for the release notes, I guess the annotation to use can be managed by the configuration?

I think the current implementation is perfect to also handle generating a changelog file from the annotations. I'm currently playing around with something like this:

cat "Chart.yaml" |
        yq e '.annotations["artifacthub.io/changes"]' - |                                                           # extract the changes annotation, which is a YAML array
        yq -o json e '.' - |                                                                                        # convert the YAML array to a JSON array
        jq 'group_by(.kind) | to_entries | map({key: .value[0].kind, value: .value})' - |                           # group the JSON array by their 'kind' - ie. the type of change
        gomplate -d chart="Chart.yaml" -d changes=stdin:///in.json -f CHANGELOG.md.gotmpl >"CHANGELOG.md" # use the JSON above as input to render the changelog

CHANGELOG.md.gotmpl:

{{ $chart := (ds "chart") -}}
{{ $changes := (ds "changes") -}}
# Changelog

## {{ $chart.version }}

{{- range $kind := $changes }}

### {{ $kind.key | strings.Title }}

{{- range $change := $kind.value }}
- {{ $change.description }}
{{- end }}

{{- end }}

[nlamirault]

does anyone have an example of how to make a chart release with a changelog using this Github Action ?

[aabouzaid]

@nlamirault Here it is.
https://github.com/camunda-community-hub/camunda-helm/blob/bc501f7/.github/workflows/release.yaml