Automatically add release notes on github releases

[nicolaferraro]

Does anyone know a smart way to automatically add features and bugfixes from commit messages at each release? Creation of release under github is currently a manual process (tag is auto-created, I create the release from that tag and I upload the generated files manually), so the list can be also generated in a text file if that's not automated.

@lburgazzoli, @rhuss, @astefanutti, @oscerd, @zregvart

[astefanutti]

After quick search, I've found the following (filtering Golang only):

• https://github.com/aktau/github-release
• https://github.com/itchio/gothub
• https://github.com/tcnksm/ghr

It looks like Travis CI provides some level of support: https://docs.travis-ci.com/user/deployment/releases.

If the above is not enough, we'll have to go lower level:

• https://help.github.com/articles/automation-for-release-forms-with-query-parameters/
• https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/releases/#create-a-release

[rhuss]

Tbh, I still collect the high-level changes manually in a top-level CHANGELOG and verify for each PR that it contains an entry in the changelog if its a relevant PR.

I experimented with auto extracting from commit message, but this requires a level of commit discipline I never ever have seen in a community project with PR contributions from the outside. Of course, one can insist on rewriting the commit messages when reviewing a PR but at the end, this was just tedious.

I have to confess that even for PRs which are missing a changelog entry, I often approve the PR to avoid yet another turnaround and edit the changelog directly on upstream master via the GitHub Web UI, adding a line to the Changelog directly.

Example of a changelog maintained this way is https://github.com/fabric8io/docker-maven-plugin/blob/master/doc/changelog.md (the links are created via a script during a release when entering I just add the plain issues/pr number without the link).

'happy to do it differently, but as mentioned, educating people to use a fixed format for the commit messages is a challenge on its own (where I've failed multiple times, think e.g. how we tried to introduce commitizen style logs in the Syndesis project).

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