Changelog from Conventional Commits - Github Action

This GitHub Action automatically generates a changelog based on all the Conventional Commits between the latest tag and the previous tag, or beween 2 specific tags.

Fork Notice

This is a fork of https://github.com/requarks/changelog-action

The main difference:

• The original action required the tag to exist first, and it was designed to run whenever a version tag was pushed.
• It doesn’t make sense that the tag already exists when the CHANGELOG.md file is not yet written, making the workflow extremely hard to fit in various pipelines.
• This fork allows you to "mock" a tag, e.g. v0.2.0...v0.2.1 but the tag v0.2.1 doesn't exist yet (use a commit hash instead).

Along with a number of improvements:

• Original action required two tags to be present, but this fork can generate from the initial commit, instead of failing when you deploy the first version.
• Original action fetched two recent versions and compared them, prohibiting to create any other tag than a version tag, or deploying an older version (e.g. patch release). This fork correctly finds the correct previous tag.
• Refactor with TypeScript, biome, bun.

Features

• Generates the CHANGELOG changes in Markdown format
• Turns PR ids into links and add the PR author.
• Prepends a shortened commit SHA ID to the commit for quick access.
• BREAKING CHANGE notes are added to the top of the changelog version along with the related commit.
• Exports changelog to a variable that can used in a subsequent step to create a release changelog.
• Automatically injects the changes into the CHANGELOG.md file or creates it if it doesn't exist yet. (optional)
• Will not mess up with any header or instructions you already have at the top of your CHANGELOG.md.
• Will not add duplicate version changes if it already exists in the CHANGELOG.md file.
• Optionally exclude types from the CHANGELOG. (default: build,docs,other,style)

Example Workflows

1. Manually trigger to create a release PR

name: Deploy

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      version-tag:
        description: Version tag
        required: true
        default: 'v0.1.0'
      dry-run:  # print the changelog without creating a PR.
        description: Dry run
        type: boolean
        default: false
      exclude-types:
        description: Commit types to exclude from the changelog
        required: false
        default: build,docs,style,other

jobs:
  changelog:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Get CHANGELOG
        id: changelog
        uses: kiyoon/changelog-action@v2
        with:
          new-version-tag-for-future: ${{ github.event.inputs.version-tag }}
          tag-prefix: v
          exclude-types: ${{ github.event.inputs.exclude-types }}
          write-to-file: true
          changelog-file-path: CHANGELOG.md

      - name: Display CHANGELOG
        env:
          CHANGES_BODY: ${{ steps.changelog.outputs.changes }}
        run: |
          echo "${CHANGES_BODY}"
          echo "${CHANGES_BODY}" > "$GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY"

      - name: Create PR
        if: ${{ github.event.inputs.dry-run == 'false' }}
        uses: peter-evans/create-pull-request@v7
        with:
          commit-message: 'chore: release ${{ github.event.inputs.version-tag }}'
          title: 'chore: release ${{ github.event.inputs.version-tag }}'
          body: |
            :robot: The changelog was automatically generated by [kiyoon/changelog-action](https://github.com/kiyoon/changelog-action). :robot:
          branch: chore/release-${{ github.event.inputs.version-tag }}
          labels: |
            release

2. When the release PR is merged, create a Release

Follow the example in kiyoon/parse-changelog-action. It runs when CHANGELOG.md file is changed and with a commit message following chore: release vX.X.X format.

Inputs

Field	Description	Required	Default
token	Your GitHub token	❌	${{ github.token }}
new-version-tag-for-future	The version tag name but the tag doesn't have to exist already (e.g. v0.1.0)	✅
new-version-ref	Git ref (e.g. commit hash) up to which the changelog is to be determined (latest). Default is the commit sha of the action run, usually HEAD of a branch	❌	${{ github.sha }}
previous-version-tag	The tag up to which the changelog is to be determined (oldest). The tag must exist. If not set, automatically determined.	❌
tag-prefix	The prefix of tags to look up if previous-version-tag is not set (e.g. v for v0.1.0)	❌	``
exclude-types	A comma-separated list of commit types you want to exclude from the changelog (e.g. doc,chore,perf)	❌	build,docs,other,style
exclude-scopes	A comma-separated list of commit scopes you want to include in the changelog (e.g. dev,release)	❌
restrict-to-types	A comma-separated list of commit types you want to restrict to for the changelog (e.g. feat,fix,refactor). Overrides excludeTypes if defined.	❌
write-to-file	Should CHANGELOG.md be updated with latest changelog	❌	false
changelog-file-path	The CHANGELOG.md file path when write-to-file is true	❌	CHANGELOG.md
include-ref-issues	Should the changelog include the issues referenced for each PR.	❌	true
use-gitmojis	Should type headers be prepended with their related gitmoji	❌	true
include-invalid-commits	Whether to include commits that don't respect the Conventional Commits format	❌	false
reverse-order	List commits in reverse order (from newer to older) instead of the default (older to newer).	❌	false

Outputs

Field	Description
changes	Generated CHANGELOG changes for the latest tag, without the version / date header (for use in GitHub Releases).