Release-notes-generator

A helper project to generate release notes for our web applications.

I got the idea for this project from this article: Creating a Command Line Tool with JBang and PicoCLI to Generate Release Notes.

The original code can be found here: https://gist.github.com/rokon12/fd039cdcfa98920ea9e881bf18e33b0b

Requirements

TL;DR

1. Java 17 or higher version
2. gh command line tool
3. At the 1st run of the application you can find a validation token for GitHub API access. You need to copy that code and authenticate with GitHub using that token.

Longer requirements description

This code fetches your GitHub API token securely. It first checks if a cached token exists. If not, it uses the gh command-line tool to get your authentication status. It launches the gh login process if you're not logged in. Once logged in, it extracts your API token from the gh output and caches it for future use. If there are any errors during this process, it throws an exception.

Important Note: This Application relies on the GitHub CLI (gh). If you haven't already installed it, you can find instructions for your operating system.

How to use it

It is a command line script. It can be run either from a command line or from an IDE execution environment.

This application has a list of mandatory parameters:

• -u or -user GitHub username
• -r or --repo GitHub repository name
• -s or --since Since commit hash
• -ut or --until Until commit hash

Optional parameters:

• -f or --file Output file for release notes
• -v or --version Release version (default value: v1.0.0)
• -o or --output-format Output format (default vale: MARKDOWN). Currently it supports MARKDOWN or HTML formats.

An example list of parameters:

--user=joe --repo=example --since=4c087123 --until=b5f64456 --file=release_notes_example --output-format=MARKDOWN

Execution of the application

How to execute the app in the command line

You need to have installed at least Java 17 and JAVA_HOME env variable should point to that Java binary file.

$./gradlew bootJar

BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 2s
4 actionable tasks: 1 executed, 3 up-to-date

chmod u+x build/libs/releasenotes-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

java -jar build/libs/releasenotes-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar --user=joe --repo=example --since=4c087123 --until=b5f64456 --file=release_notes_example --output-format=MARKDOWN

How to execute the app from IntelliJ

1. Create a run configuration for the app under the Spring Boot option
2. Select Java 17 under the Build and run option
3. In the Modify options dropdown add Program arguments
4. Into the Program arguments field add the parameters for executing the app. For example: --user=joe --repo=example --since=4c087123 --until=b5f64456 --file=release_notes_example --output-format=MARKDOWN
5. Click on the run button in the toolbar or select the Run.. command in the Run menu and select the configuration you would like to execute.

The release_notes_example.md file is going to be generated into the project root in the selected MARKDOWN format. The above defined parameters would create it for the example repository of joe user from the 4c087123 commit hash until the b5f64456 commit hash.

TODO

1. Add organisation option
2. Add an option to use ENV files for parameters