getchanges 0.1.0

getchanges is a utility for retrieving changelogs

getchanges aims to be a CLI tool for finding and retrieving changelogs for any package. That means:

• system packages (apt, zypper, pacman, brew, …)

• language packages (pip, gem, cargo, …)

• ad-hoc scripts (curl https://foo.bar > /bin/foobar, …)

This project is a Work In-Progress! Expect very little for now and avoid the disappointment.

If you’re looking to contribute – that’s fantastic, I’m always open to getting some helping hands! Feel free to dive right in.

Usage

The rough end goal is to have:

$ changes [-sSOURCE] [--from FROM_VERSION] [--to TO_VERSION] NAME

where:

OPTIONS:
  <NAME>                   Sets the name (of package / command) to search.
  -s, --source <SOURCE>    Provides a source language restriction/hint.
  -f, --from <FROM>        Outputs the Changelog beginning with this version.
  -t, --to <FROM>          Outputs the Changelog ending with this version.

Plan

My plan is to start by requiring source hints, which will let me build up a library of package-source-parsers:

$ changes -spy coveralls  # parses https://pypi.org/project/coveralls/
                          # finds https://github.com/coveralls-clients/coveralls-python/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md
$ changes -sbrew ripgrep  # parses https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/master/Formula/awscli.rb
                          # finds https://github.com/aws/aws-cli
                          # locates https://github.com/aws/aws-cli/blob/develop/CHANGELOG.rst

I’ll also want to expand this to cover packages whose names do not match their cli commands, eg. so utilities can be looked up directly:

$ changes -sbrew rg  # determines rg -> ripgrep
                     # parses https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/master/Formula/ripgrep.rb
                     # finds https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
                     # locates https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md

Once that has some coverage, I’ll expand the “Changelog locator” chunk:

$ changes -spy coverage  # parses https://pypi.org/project/coverage/
                         # finds https://bitbucket.org/ned/coveragepy
                         # links to https://github.com/nedbat/coveragepy
                         # locates https://github.com/nedbat/coveragepy/blob/master/CHANGES.rst
$ changes -sgem mailchimp-api  # parses https://rubygems.org/gems/mailchimp-api
                               # finds https://bitbucket.org/mailchimp/mailchimp-api-ruby/
                               # locates https://bitbucket.org/mailchimp/mailchimp-api-ruby/compare/2.0.6..2.0.5

By now, it will probably be obvious that some projects will simply refuse to be easy to work with, so I’ll probably try to come up with a decently straightforward way to drop-in overrides. Hopefully, I’ll have been keeping the various pieces separate enough to avoid letting this step turn into too much of a headache.

At that point, I can work on changelog parsers – I realize there are infinite possible options here, but a bit of best-effort parsing of .md, .rst, NEWS, GitHub releases, and commit logs should be a decent 80% – especially if I focus on various “standards” such as conventional changelogs.

This will allow me to add version range flags with a reasonable chance of working:

$ changes -srust clap --from v2.31.2  # parses https://github.com/clap-rs/clap/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md

And, finally, a more general search function can get played with until I end up with my rough end goal:

$ changes hub --from 2.4.0 --to 2.5.1  # parses https://github.com/github/hub/releases

Releasing

1. bump setup.py:version

2. clog -C CHANGELOG.md -F –setversion=x.y.z

3. git add setup.py CHANGELOG.md

4. git commit -m ‘chore(release): bump version’

5. git tag -a x.y.z –cleanup=whitespace