Process for including in an NPM package?

[paul-uz]

So I'm a bit confused about how this would work.

I have an NPM package, and I make a new feature. I commit the work to my repo, and the publish to NPM.

I want the changelog, created by git cliff, to be included in the SDK.

But it seems like a chicken and egg kinda situation; I have to make the commits first to create the changelog, but by doing so, that means I have to do another commit to add the changelog.

Whats the correct order of doing things so I'm not adding additional, unneeded commits?

[orhun]

Hello!

Good question, my recommended flow is the following:

0. Update your git-cliff config to skip the "release" commits.

[git]
commit_parsers = [
  { message = "^chore\\(release\\):", skip = true },
]

2. Generate the changelog (git cliff --prepend CHANGELOG.md)
3. Commit the changes (git commit -m "chore(release): bump the version")

With this approach you won't end up with release commits appearing in the changelog.

[paul-uz]

But that still has the same problem; the latest changelog won't be in the latest release. The changelog will always be behind for a specific version.

Could you provide an end to end example? As I'm struggling to wrap my head around this.

[orhun]

Hey, sorry for confusion, I'm also a bit confused 😅

Do you want to include the changelog in your release after you release it? What do you mean by "the latest changelog won't be in the latest release"?

Could you provide an end to end example?

I usually generate the changelog before the release and use it as the release notes. (I use git-cliff-action for that in GitHub Actions)

Maybe elaborate on your workflow a bit?

[paul-uz]

I want to include the changelog (generated by git-cliff) in the latest release

[orhun]

Hmm then you can probably use something like https://git-cliff.org/docs/usage/adding-commits/ ?

[Cyclonit]

Let me give it a try 😄

In git-cliff, the commit including the changelog is the release commit. Let's say your repo has the following commits:

A (1.0.0) -> B -> C

You want to create release 1.1.0. All you need to do is run git-cliff on commit C and commit the generated changelog in a new commit D. You can do other release related changes, like bumping the version of your package in this commit.

Thus your history will look like this:

A (1.0.0) -> B -> C -> D (1.1.0)