check-changelog 0.3.0

check that changelog conforms to 'Keep A Changelog' style

check-changelog

---

The project's aims are:

• validate CHANGELOG.md. Check that it conforms to Keep A Changelog and Common Changelog styles.
• ensure git tags are documented in CHANGELOG.md
• block pushing tags without changelog. See git pre-push section

Main features:

• check that changelog conforms to Keep A Changelog style

• allow release notes. Add them between the release header and change list (Common Changelog addition)

  ## [1.0.0] - 2023-05-05
  Release notes
  
  ### Added
   - add feature ...
  

• allow custom footer to keep things from being verified. Useful for legal notes, text used by other scripts, HTML comments, etc

  -----
  Linter will ignore this section.
  <!--- message for some script -->
  [my site]: http://mysite.com
  

• gcc style error reports

  CHANGELOG.md:10: bad release title: [0.2.1]; expected '[Unreleased]' or '[ver] - YYYY-MM-DD'
  CHANGELOG.md:12: bad change type: Changed2; expected one of ['Added', 'Changed', ...]
  

Installation

pip install check-changelog

Usage

From command line

# check CHANGELOG.md in a current dir
check-changelog
check-changelog --check=yes --tags=   # default settings
# check CHANGELOG.md and git tags
check-changelog --check=yes --tags=history

As a pre-commit hook. Add this section to your .pre-commit-config.yaml

- repo: https://github.com/aanatoly/check-changelog
  rev: '0.3.0'
  hooks:
    - id: check-changelog

git pre-push hook

As a git pre-push hook, check-changelog can block git from pushing tags without changelog. To install it that way, run the following commmands

# backup existing hook
mv .git/hooks/pre-push  .git/hooks/pre-push.bak
# install new hook
check-changelog --install=yes

and let's test it

git tag -a -m "abc.7.7" "abc.7.7"
git tag -a -m "abc.7.8" "abc.7.8"
git push --tags --dry-run

# check-changelog :: INFO  :: file CHANGELOG.md: starting
# check-changelog :: INFO  :: task check tags documentation: starting
# check-changelog :: INFO  :: scan 2 tags from 'hook' source
# check-changelog :: ERROR :: tag 'abc.7.7' not found
# check-changelog :: ERROR :: tag 'abc.7.8' not found
# check-changelog :: ERROR :: task check tags documentation: fail
# check-changelog :: ERROR :: file CHANGELOG.md: fail

git tag -d "abc.7.7"
git tag -d "abc.7.8"

Alternatives

check-changelog is a minimalistic tool by design. It checks the Changelog structure and does nothing else.

If you are looking for more, check python-kacl. It is a feature-rich tool capable of linting, fixing errors, and automating Changelog maintenance.

Development

See development doc