Infra: Automate Publication of Release Notes on Github and Changelog

[s3alfisc]

Context

Currently, whenever a new version is released, I need to tag a new release on github "by hand" as well as update the changelog in the docs. There must be tools / gh actions out there to automate that procedure?

To do

• Research the best tools.
• Adjust the github action workflow to automatically publish new release notes, and potentially, to automatically update the changelog.
• Optimally, we would be able to cluster the content of the release notes by "new features", "breaking changes", "maintenance", "documentation", and "infrastructure".

[sanskriti2005]

Hello! I would love to work on this. Can I be assigned to it?

[s3alfisc]

Yes, of course! I'll assign this to you then. Thank you =)

[s3alfisc]

Hi @sanskriti2005 , maybe you can take some inspiration from the pymc-marketing workflows that Juan has listed here: https://github.com/py-econometrics/pyfixest/issues/492#issuecomment-2156021566.

[sanskriti2005]

Thank you for assigning this to me!

[s3alfisc]

Of course! =) Let me know if you stumble over any problems / if you need any help!

[sanskriti2005]

Hello @s3alfisc !

Hope you had a lovely weekend.

I have a few suggestions and a few questions. I suggest the use of release-drafter tool. It is highly customizable and we can integrate it with GitHub Actions to automate the update of changelogs with every release.

My main question is about the changelogs itself, which, correct me if I'm wrong is this file. If it is, I want to know what kind of a format it should have for the automation.

Let me know what you think of the following workflow:

name: Release Drafter

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master
permissions:
  contents: write
  pull-requests: write

jobs:
  update_release_draft:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Draft Release Notes
        uses: release-drafter/release-drafter@v6
        with:
          config-name: my-config.yml
          disable-autolabeler: true
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} 

The file for the Release Notes draft format:

name-template: 'v$RESOLVED_VERSION'
tag-template: 'v$RESOLVED_VERSION'
categories:
  - title: 'New Features'
    labels:
      - 'enhancement'
  - title: 'Breaking Changes'
    labels:
      #What label should I put here?
  - title: 'Maintainence'
    labels:
      #What label should I put here?
  - title: 'Documentation'
    labels:
      -'documentation'
  - title: 'Infrastructure'
    labels:
      #What label should I put here?

change-template: '- $TITLE @$AUTHOR (#$NUMBER)'
change-title-escapes: '\<*_&' 
version-resolver:
  major:
    labels:
      - 'major'
  minor:
    labels:
      - 'minor'
  patch:
    labels:
      - 'patch'
  default: patch
template: |
  ## Changes

  $CHANGES

I'd like to thank you again and in advance for being so supportive and helpful!

[s3alfisc]

I'd like to thank you again and in advance for being so supportive and helpful!

Oh it's really up to me to thank you! =) This looks very good and the release-drafter seems to be the right tool for the job!

Yes, the changelog is in readme.qmd.

I have added three new labels"breaking changes", "infrastructure" and "maintenance". So I think you could put these into the wfl and open the PR =)

[s3alfisc]

For the versioning, I would suggest the following:

major: labels:

• 'breaking change'
• 'feature' minor: labels:
• 'enhancement'
• 'documentation' patch: labels:
• 'maintenance'
• 'infrastructure'

What do you think?