GitReleaseNoteGenerator 4.0.0

GitReleaseNoteGenerator

A .NET global tool that generates categorized release notes from git commit history using the GitHub API.

Requirements

The tool ships builds for .NET 10 and .NET 11, so either runtime must be installed.

Installation

dotnet tool install -g GitReleaseNoteGenerator

Quick Start

# Generate release notes for a version
git-release-notes --token <GITHUB_PAT> --owner myorg --repo myrepo --release-version v2.0.0

# Write the notes to a file
git-release-notes --token <GITHUB_PAT> --owner myorg --repo myrepo --release-version v2.0.0 --output-file release-notes.md

# Write the notes to GITHUB_OUTPUT in CI
git-release-notes --token <GITHUB_PAT> --owner myorg --repo myrepo --release-version v2.0.0 --github-output --output-name changelog

Version: --release-version is required. Compute it in your pipeline — for example with Nerdbank.GitVersioning (nbgv) or MinVer — and pass the result in.

CLI Reference

Commit Prefix Categories

Commits are categorized by their conventional-commit-style prefix:

Commits from dependabot[bot] and renovate[bot] are automatically categorized as Dependencies.

How Commits Are Collected

• With a base ref (the latest release tag by default), the commits come from the GitHub compare API. It is read page by page until every commit in the range is collected.
• With no releases yet, the whole history reachable from the head ref is used.
• Contributors who already appear in the history reachable from the base ref are not listed as new contributors.
• Rate limits are waited out for as long as GitHub asks (x-ratelimit-reset or Retry-After). Server errors and network failures are retried up to three times with exponential backoff.

GitHub Actions Usage

name: Create Release
on:
  push:
    tags: ['v*']
jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v7
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      - uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v6
        with:
          dotnet-version: '10.0.x'
      - run: dotnet tool install -g GitReleaseNoteGenerator
      - name: Generate Release Notes
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}
        run: git-release-notes --release-version ${{ github.ref_name }} --output-file release-notes.md
      - name: Create GitHub Release
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}
        run: gh release create "${{ github.ref_name }}" --title "${{ github.ref_name }}" --notes-file release-notes.md

Migration from ChangeLog Action

If you are migrating from the ChangeLog GitHub Action:

1. Replace the glennawatson/ChangeLog@... step with the dotnet tool install and run steps shown above.
2. The commit prefix categories and emoji mappings are the same.
3. Use --output-file with gh release create --notes-file instead of action outputs.
4. The GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable is read automatically when --token is not specified.

License

MIT