changelog plugin

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Getting Started

This project is a fastlane plugin. To get started with fastlane-plugin-changelog, add it to your project by running:

fastlane add_plugin changelog

About changelog

This plugin is inspired by and based on Keep a CHANGELOG project. Keep a CHANGELOG proposes a standardised format for keeping change log of your project repository in CHANGELOG.md file. This file contains a curated, chronologically ordered list of notable changes for each version of a project in human readable format.

Since Keep a CHANGELOG project proposes a well-defined structure with sections (e.g.: [Unreleased], 0.3.0]) and subsections (Added, Changed, Deprecated, Removed, Fixed, Security) it opens up an opportunity to automate reading from/writing to CHANGELOG.md with fastlane.

Getting started

  1. cd to your project folder
  2. touch CHANGELOG.md
  3. open CHANGELOG.md in your favourite text editor
  4. paste in proposed structure from What’s a change log?

Actions

fastlane-plugin-changelog consists of 3 actions enabling you to manipulate CHANGELOG.md from fastlane.

read_changelog

Reads the content of a section from your project's CHANGELOG.md file. CHANGELOG.md must follow structure proposed by Keep a CHANGELOG project.

read_changelog  # Reads the Unreleased section from CHANGELOG.md in your project's folder
read_changelog(
  changelog_path: './custom_folder/CHANGELOG.md',   # Specify path to CHANGELOG.md
  section_identifier: '[Unreleased]',   # Specify what section to read
  excluded_markdown_elements: '["###"]' # Specify which markdown elements should be excluded
)

Use the output of this action in conjunction with for example pilot to upload your change log to TestFlight or with github_release to create a new release on Github.

update_changelog

Updates section identifier of your project's CHANGELOG.md file.

update_changelog(
  section_identifier: "[Build 123]", # Specify what section to update
  updated_section_identifier: "Build 321" # Specify new section identifier
)

stamp_changelog

Stamps the Unreleased (see How can I minimize the effort required?) section with provided identifier in your project CHANGELOG.md file and sets up a new Unreleased section above it. Additionally, you can provide git tag associated with this section. stamp_changelog will then create a link to diff between this and previous section's tag on Github. This will enable you to quickly get to comparison between two tags.

stamp_changelog(
  section_identifier: "Build XYZ", # Specify identifier to stamp the Unreleased section with 
  git_tag: "bXYZ" # Specify reference to git tag associated with this section
)

Example

As a developer you have to remember to keep your CHANGELOG.md up-to-date with whatever features, bug fixes etc. your repo contains and let fastlane do the rest.

lane :beta do
  build_number = get_build_number # Get build number
  gym # Compile

  changelog = read_changelog # Read changelog
  pilot(changelog: changelog) # Send binary and changelog to TestFlight

  stamp_changelog(section_identifier: "Build #{build_number}") # Stamp Unreleased section with newly released build number
end

Issues and Feedback

For any other issues and feedback about this plugin, please submit it to this repository.

Troubleshooting

If you have trouble using plugins, check out the Plugins Troubleshooting doc in the main fastlane repo.

Using fastlane Plugins

For more information about how the fastlane plugin system works, check out the Plugins documentation.

About fastlane

fastlane is the easiest way to automate building and releasing your iOS and Android apps. To learn more, check out fastlane.tools.