changie_bot

Description

When using changie to generate your changelog, it is useful to be able to autogenerate a changelog file in the format expected by changie when a bot creates a PR. This action checks out the branch for the PR, creates a new changie yaml file, commits it and then pushes it to the PR.

A common use is PRs created by dependabot.

Why

Automate changelog generation for more visability with automated bot changes.

When

Once a PR is created and it has been labeled as indicated. It will only create a new yaml file if none already exists on the PR.

An exampe use is for PRs created by dependabot. You can also manually trigger this by adding the specified label at any time.

Required inputs

• GITHUB_TOKEN: If you expect the resulting commit to add a changelog should retrigger workflows, you will need to use a Personal Access Token for the bot to commit the file. When using the GITHUB_TOKEN, the resulting commit will not trigger another GitHub Actions Workflow run. This is due to limitations set by GitHub. See the docs.
• commit_author_name: Author namw of the commit for the changelog file.
• commit_author_email: Email of the author of the commit for the changelog file.
• changie_kind: Type of changelog file # TODO: how does changie define this?
• label: GitHub label to trigger off

Optional inputs

• commit_message:
  • description: Message to put on commit of new changelog file
  • default: "Add automated changelog yaml from template"
• custom_changelog_string: # is this the right way? could it be templated? start here and iterate.
  • description: The multi-line string containg the expected contents of the custom fields for a changelog entry.

Assumptions

1. You're using changie
2. Your changelogs live in the default `.changes. path, nothing custom
3. This action is called in the context of a PR
4. Not changelog yaml file already exists on this PR
5. This PR already exists and you just need to add a commit with the changelog to it

Example

name: Changie Bot Action

on:
  pull_request:
    # catch when the PR is opened with the label or when the label is added
    types: [labeled]

permissions:
  contents: write
  pull-requests: read

jobs:
  dependency_changelog:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: a job to add a changelog yaml file to bot PRs

    steps:
    
    - name: Create Changelog Commit on PR
      id: filename_time
      uses: emmyoop/[email protected]
      with:
        GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}  # could be a PAT too
        commit_author_name: "emmyoop bot"
        commit_author_email: "[email protected]"
        commit_message: "My custom commit message"
        changie_kind: "Bug"
        label: "my_custom"
        custom_changelog_string: "custom:\n  Field 1: Some String\n  Field 2: 1\n  Field 3: a\n"