VCLog

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Description

VCLog is a versatile cross-VCS/SCM changelog generator. It currently supports Git, Hg and (limited) Subversion.

Instruction

Creating Changelogs

The default output is an ANSI colored GNU-like changelog. From a repository's root directory try:

$ vclog

The is the same as specifying 'changelog' or 'log'.

$ vclog log

To generate an a different format use -f:

$ vclog -f xml

Creating Release Histories

To get a release history specify -r, --release or --history option.

$ vclog -r

Again the default format is an ANSI colored GNU-like text style.

Unlike change logs, release histories group changes by tags. The tag message is used as the release note. If the underlying SCM doesn't support tag messages than the message of the first commit prior to the tag is used.

See 'vclog help' for more options.

Bumping Versions

VCLog can also be used to intelligently bump versions. To see the current tag version:

$ vclog-version 1.1.0

To see the next reasonable version based on current changes:

$ vclog-bump 1.2.0

VCLog can determine the appropriate version based on commit level. Any commit with a level greater than 1 will bump the major number, while any commit with a level of 0 or 1 will bump the minor number. All lower level only bump the patch level.

Writing Heuristics

You can configure custom log heuristics for your project. VCLog uses the gem[http://rubyworks.github.com/confection] to handle configuration, and will look for a .confile or Confile in which to find a vclog section.

vclog do ... end

Within this block we can define rules via the #on method.

on /updated? (README|VERSION|MANIFEST)/ do |commit|
  commit.label = "Adminstrative Changes"
  commit.level = -3
end

To make things easier we can setup commit types. Types make it easier to categorize commits, assigning them labels and levels base on the type name. Use #type in the rules to specify the level and label of a commit type.

type :admin,  -2, "Administrave Changes"

on /updated? (README|VERSION|MANIFEST)/ do |commit|
  commit.type = :admin
end

These rules can also "massage" the commit message.

on /\Aadmin:/ do |commit, matchdata|
  commit.type    = :admin
  commit.message = matchdate.post_match
end

Lastly, we can customize the colorization of the certain formats via #colors method.

colors :blue, :cyan, :green, :yellow, :red

Limitations

Subversion

Because Subversion is a centralized version control system, it contacts the server every time 'svn log' is run. For this reason, having vclog generate a release history is likely to fail since it must run 'svn log' for each tag. Any repository with more than a few tags may be denied access by the server for making too many rapid requests. I have no idea how to remedy this issue. If you have any ideas please let me know.

License

VCLog is distributable in accordance with the terms of the FreeBSD license.

See License.txt for details.