Writing a Changelog Entry

A changelog entry accompanying a change should be added to the changelog/ directory. The name of a file in this directory follows a specific template:

<PULL REQUEST NUMBER>.<TYPE>[.<COUNTER>].rst

The fields have the following meanings:

• <PULL REQUEST NUMBER>: This is the number of the pull request, so people can jump from the changelog entry to the diff on BitBucket.

• <TYPE>: This is the type of the change and must be one of the values described below.

• <COUNTER>: This is an optional field, if you make more than one change of the same type you can append a counter to the subsequent changes, i.e. 100.bugfix.rst and 100.bugfix.1.rst for two bugfix changes in the same PR.

The list of possible types is defined the the towncrier section of pyproject.toml, the types are:

• feature: This change is a new code feature.

• bugfix: This is a change which fixes a bug.

• doc: A documentation change.

• removal: A deprecation or removal of public API.

• misc: Any small change which doesn’t fit anywhere else, such as a change to the package infrastructure.

Rendering the Changelog at Release Time

When you are about to tag a release first you must run towncrier to render the changelog. The steps for this are as follows:

• Run towncrier build –version vx.y.z using the version number you want to tag.

• Agree to have towncrier remove the fragments.

• Add and commit your changes.

• Tag the release.

NOTE: If you forget to add a Changelog entry to a tagged release (either manually or automatically with towncrier) then the Bitbucket pipeline will fail. To be able to use the same tag you must delete it locally and on the remote branch:

# First, actually update the CHANGELOG and commit the update
git commit

# Delete tags
git tag -d vWHATEVER.THE.VERSION
git push --delete origin vWHATEVER.THE.VERSION

# Re-tag with the same version
git tag vWHATEVER.THE.VERSION
git push --tags origin main