About Changelog Generator

The Changelog Generator transforms your Git commit messages into professional, well-organized release notes. By following the Conventional Commits format, you can automate the creation of changelogs that clearly communicate what changed in each release.

Why Maintain a Changelog?

• Communicate changes: Help users understand what's new, fixed, or broken
• Track history: Maintain a human-readable record of all notable changes
• Aid migration: Document breaking changes and upgrade paths
• Build trust: Show users you care about transparency and documentation
• Save time: Generate changelogs automatically instead of writing them manually

How It Works

The tool parses commit messages and automatically categorizes them:

Automatic Categories

• Breaking Changes: Commits with ! or BREAKING CHANGE (highest priority)
• Features: Commits starting with feat:
• Bug Fixes: Commits starting with fix:
• Documentation: Commits starting with docs:
• Performance: Commits starting with perf:
• Refactoring: Commits starting with refactor:
• Testing: Commits starting with test:
• Build: Commits starting with build:
• CI/CD: Commits starting with ci:
• Other: Any commits that don't match conventional format

Input Format

Enter one commit message per line in Conventional Commits format:

feat(auth): add social login support
fix(api): handle timeout errors gracefully
docs: update installation guide
perf: reduce database queries in dashboard
feat!: remove support for Node 12

Output Format

The tool generates a markdown changelog entry:

# [1.2.0] - 2024-01-15

## Breaking Changes

- (auth): remove support for Node 12

## Features

- (auth): add social login support

## Bug Fixes

- (api): handle timeout errors gracefully

## Documentation

- update installation guide

## Performance

- reduce database queries in dashboard

Getting Commit Messages

You can extract commit messages from Git using these commands:

All commits since last tag:

git log $(git describe --tags --abbrev=0)..HEAD --oneline --pretty=format:"%s"

All commits between two tags:

git log v1.0.0..v1.1.0 --oneline --pretty=format:"%s"

All commits since a specific date:

git log --since="2024-01-01" --oneline --pretty=format:"%s"

Using GitHub CLI:

gh pr list --state merged --limit 100 --json title --jq '.[].title'

Best Practices

• One changelog per project: Keep all versions in a single CHANGELOG.md file
• Newest first: Put the latest version at the top
• Keep a version: Never delete old changelog entries
• Date format: Use YYYY-MM-DD format (ISO 8601)
• Group by type: Organize changes by category (Features, Bug Fixes, etc.)
• Link to commits: Include links to GitHub commits or PRs when possible
• Highlight breaking changes: Always put breaking changes first
• Be concise: Use clear, simple language that users can understand

Example Complete CHANGELOG.md

# Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/),
and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html).

## [1.2.0] - 2024-01-15

### Breaking Changes

- remove support for Node 12 and below

### Features

- (auth): add OAuth2 social login
- (api): implement GraphQL endpoint
- (ui): add dark mode support

### Bug Fixes

- (api): fix memory leak in WebSocket connections
- (auth): correct token expiration handling

### Performance

- (database): optimize user query with indexes

## [1.1.0] - 2023-12-01

### Features

- (api): add pagination to user list endpoint
- (docs): add interactive API playground

### Bug Fixes

- (ui): fix responsive layout on mobile devices

## [1.0.0] - 2023-10-15

### Features

- Initial release
- User authentication
- RESTful API
- Admin dashboard

Keep a Changelog Principles

This tool follows the Keep a Changelog principles:

• Changelogs are for humans, not machines
• One entry per version
• Group similar changes
• Versions and sections are linkable
• Latest version comes first
• Release date of each version is displayed

Automation Ideas

• CI/CD Integration: Generate changelog automatically on release
• Git Hooks: Update changelog in pre-release hooks
• GitHub Actions: Auto-generate and commit changelog on version tags
• Release Notes: Use generated changelog for GitHub/GitLab releases

Tools That Work With This

• standard-version: Automated versioning and changelog generation
• semantic-release: Fully automated version management and package publishing
• conventional-changelog: Generate changelogs from git metadata
• commitizen: Help developers write conventional commits

Related Tools

• Commit Message Linter - Validate commit format before generating changelog
• Semantic Version Calculator - Determine version numbers
• Git Command Generator - Extract commits from Git
• Markdown Converter - Convert changelog to other formats
• Documentation Outline Generator - Organize documentation