Hew (Python implementation)

The Hew changelog specification reference implementation for the Python language.

Getting Started

Pending release to distribution channels like PyPi, you may run the program locally with uv. A nix devshell is present if you'd prefer to enter that managed environment with nix develop ..

Without nix, you will also need to obtain and install Pandoc to use the formatting translation features of hew.

Usage

hew Python supports two primary modes of operation: as a native library and as a command-line utility.

CLI

Use the executable command line interface if you'd like to use the Python program as a utility and work primarily with the output of the parsing results, usually JSON.

uv run hew --help

Consult the help text to learn about supported flags and their effects.

Library

After installing hew into a Python environment, instantiate the Hewer class with the necessary constructor arguments:

Hewer(...)

Validation

Clone with the submodule and use its spec/repo-gen.sh script along with the sibling repo-spec.json file to generate a sample repository with Hew-compliant changelogs and compare the results with the expected JSON results.

The ./scripts/validate.py file is available to facilitate this process.

uv run python scripts/validate.py spec/repo-gen.sh spec/repo-spec.json

This will:

• Invoke repo-gen.sh in a temporary directory
• Run Hew inside the directory to generate a changelog manifest
• Compare it (excluding unique fields like timestamps) against the given specification JSON
• Ensure the results match the specification