Support custom version tag prefixes for multi-package repositories

[cookpete]

Support custom version tag prefixes for multi-package repositories

[cookpete]

--tag-prefix and --ignore-commit-pattern added in 1.4.0

[flochtililoch]

@jeffkpayne I needed that support too so I quickly hacked it together - not the cleanest by any mean and haven't took the time to add test coverage so I won't open a PR for now.
@cookpete Let me know if you want me to open a PR for this change - and thank you for providing this module!

[flochtililoch]

One caveat of my solution is it doesn’t filter out commits from unrelated packages, so this might still need a little more work

[jeffkpayne]

Yeah, to be honest, I hadn't even thought about that problem. Could be solved with post-processing the changelog file or maybe even with some conditionals in the handlebars template, which would, for instance, exclude commit/merge/fix messages without the target package "label"...

[cookpete]

This is an interesting problem. What would the intended solution be here? If we support a prefix option, it would limit the changelog to just one package, so would you run auto-changelog twice for each?

auto-changelog --output changelog-alpha.md --tag-prefix package-alpha-
auto-changelog --output changelog-beta.md --tag-prefix package-beta-

As @flochtililoch mentions, this also suggests a need for an --ignore-commit-pattern option, which would be good to have either way.

[jeffkpayne]

1. Well, the <package> part of the tag could just be based on the package name in package.json, so, yes, you would run the auto-changelog command for each package that was being released. Not quite sure what you mean by running "auto-changelog twice for each..."
2. Right, there would have to be something in the commit message that could be used as a switch to include/exclude it from the changelog for that package.

[cookpete]

Well, the part of the tag could just be based on the package name in package.json

I think it's better to remain flexible and allow users to pass in any prefix they might be using.

Not quite sure what you mean by running "auto-changelog twice for each..."

Sorry, badly worded. I meant run it twice (or more), once for each package you are generating a log for.

Right, there would have to be something in the commit message that could be used as a switch to include/exclude it from the changelog for that package.

Yeah it would depend on a consistent commit message pattern for your use case, but I think it's a helpful feature anyway for reducing noise in logs.

[jeffkpayne]

Sounds awesome. Just curious, do you know of a good primer for getting set up locally for node.js development? I'd love to tackle this kind of thing myself, but am a little confused about how to build/test changes locally...

[cookpete]

It should be as simple as installing node.js and then:

# clone and cd into root dir
git clone https://github.com/CookPete/auto-changelog.git # or your own fork
cd auto-changelog

# install dependencies
npm install 

# run tests locally
npm test 

# compile src files to lib
npm run build

# run compiled version locally
node lib/index.js --output custom-output.md 

Just a heads up – I have already added --tag-prefix and --ignore-commit-pattern options, but have not yet pushed/published them. Feel free to play around with things locally though.