clog

A conventional changelog for the rest of us

About

clog creates a changelog automatically from your local git metadata. See the clogs changelog.md for an example.

The way this works, is every time you make a commit, you ensure your commit subject line follows the conventional format. Then when you wish to update your changelog, you simply run clog inside your local repository with any options you'd like to specify.

NOTE: clog also supports empty components by making commit messages such as alias: message or alias(): message (i.e. without the component)

Usage

There are two ways to use clog, via the command line or a library in your applicaitons.

Command Line

USAGE:
    clog [FLAGS] [OPTIONS]

FLAGS:
    -c, --config             The Clog Configuration TOML file to use (Defaults to '.clog.toml')**
    -F, --from-latest-tag    use latest tag as start (instead of --from)
    -h, --help               Prints help information
    -M, --major              Increment major version by one (Sets minor and patch to 0)
    -m, --minor              Increment minor version by one (Sets patch to 0)
    -p, --patch              Increment patch version by one
    -V, --version            Prints version information

OPTIONS:
    -f, --from <from>                e.g. 12a8546
    -g, --git-dir <gitdir>           Local .git directory (defaults to current dir + '.git')*
    -o, --outfile <outfile>          Where to write the changelog (Defaults to 'changelog.md')
    -r, --repository <repo>          Repo used for link generation (without the .git, e.g. https://github.com/thoughtram/clog)
    -l, --link-style <style>         The style of repository link to generate (Defaults to github) [values: Github, Gitlab, Stash]
    -s, --subtitle <subtitle>        e.g. "Crazy Release Title"
    -t, --to <to>                    e.g. 8057684 (Defaults to HEAD when omitted)
        --setversion <ver>           e.g. 1.0.1
    -w, --work-tree <workdir>        Local working tree of the git project (defaults to current dir)*

* If your .git directory is a child of your project directory (most common, such as
/myproject/.git) AND not in the current working directory (i.e you need to use --work-tree or
--git-dir) you only need to specify either the --work-tree (i.e. /myproject) OR --git-dir (i.e. 
/myproject/.git), you don't need to use both.

** If using the --config to specify a clog configuration TOML file NOT in the current working
directory (meaning you need to use --work-tree or --git-dir) AND the TOML file is inside your
project directory (i.e. /myproject/.clog.toml) you do not need to use --work-tree or --git-dir.

Try it!

1. Clone the repo git clone https://github.com/thoughtram/clog && cd clog

2. Build clog cargo build --release

3. Delete the old changelog file rm changelog.md

4. Run clog ./target/release/clog -r https://github.com/thoughtram/clog --setversion 0.1.0 --subtitle crazy-dog --from 6d8183f

As a Library

See the documentation for information on using clog in your applications.

Try it!

1. Clone the clog repo so that you have something to search through (Because clog uses specially formatted commit messages)

$ git clone https://github.com/thoughtram/clog ~/clog

2. Add clog as a dependency in your Cargo.toml

[dependencies]
clog = "*"

3. Use the following in your src/main.rs

extern crate clog;

use clog::Clog;

fn main() {
    // Create the struct
    let mut clog = Clog::with_dir("~/clog").unwrap_or_else(|e| { 
        println!("{}",e); 
        std::process::exit(1); 
    });

    // Set some options
    clog.repository("https://github.com/thoughtram/clog")
        .subtitle("Crazy Dog")
        .from("6d8183f")
        .version("0.1.0");

    // Write the changelog to the current working directory
    //
    // Alternatively we could have used .write_changelog_to("/somedir/some_file.md")
    clog.write_changelog();
}

4. Compile and run `$ cargo build --release && ./target/release/bin_name
5. View the output in your favorite markdown viewer! $ vim changelog.md

Default Options

clog can also be configured using a default configuration file so that you don't have to specify all the options each time you want to update your changelog. To do this add a .clog.toml file to your repository.

[clog]
repository = "https://github.com/thoughtram/clog"
subtitle = "my awesome title"

# specify the style of commit links to generate, defaults to "github" if omitted
link-style = "github"

# sets the changelog output file, defaults to "changelog.md" if omitted
outfile = "MyChangelog.md"

# If you use tags, you can set the following if you wish to only pick
# up changes since your latest tag
from-latest-tag = true

Now you can update your MyChangelog.md with clog --patch (assuming you want to update from the latest tag version, and increment your patch version by 1).

Note: Any options you specify at the command line will override options set in your .clog.toml

Custom Sections

By default, clog will display two sections in your changelog, Features and Bug Fixes. You can add additional sections by using a .clog.toml file. To add more sections, simply add a [sections] table, along with the section name and aliases you'd like to use in your commit messages:

[sections]
MySection = ["mysec", "ms"]

Now if you make a commit message such as mysec(Component): some message or ms(Component): some message there will be a new "MySection" section along side the "Features" and "Bug Fixes" areas.

NOTE: Sections with spaces are suppported, such as "My Special Section" = ["ms", "mysec"]

LICENSE

clog is licensed under the MIT Open Source license. For more information, see the LICENSE file in this repository.