Keeping the changelog up to date for any project is always a time-consuming chore and is remains a very error-prone operation. And, this is where a new tool by Matthew Weier O'Phinney, Zend Framework lead, steps in!
The new tool is named 'Changelog Generator' and can be found on Github at the following address: https://github.com/weierophinney/changelog_generator.
I took it out for a spin today and tried it out on one of my open source projects: Simple Email Form. With little effort on my part, I obtained a great-looking changelog, that is fully compatible with Github's markdown language.
To start using it, you simply need to add it to your project dependencies through Composer, and you must get the following bits of information:
- your Github API token,
- your Github username,
- the name of your Github repository and,
- the milestone number that you wish to generate a changelog for.
To add 'Changelog Generator' to your project dependencies, please enter the following commands in your favorite terminal window:
cd [your_project_folder] composer require --dev phly/changelog-generator
Then, enter the following command to generate the changelog for your project's milestone ('2' in this example):
vendor/bin/changelog_generator.php -t [the_github_api_token_here] -u andrewscaya -r mod_simpleemailform -m 2 > changelog.md
Once done, I found the generated changelog file in my project's working directory:
Many thanks to Mr. Weier O'Phinney for sharing this great tool with us!