Build a sphinx changelog from GitHub Releases
MIT License
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Sphinx-github-changelog is a Sphinx_ plugin that builds a changelog section based on
a repository's GitHub Releases
_ content.
.. _Sphinx: https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/
.. _GitHub Releases
: https://docs.github.com/en/github/administering-a-repository/about-releases
In your Sphinx documentation conf.py
:
.. code-block:: python
extensions = [
..., # your other extensions
"sphinx_github_changelog",
]
# Provide a GitHub API token:
# Pass the SPHINX_GITHUB_CHANGELOG_TOKEN environment variable to your build
# OR
# You can retrieve your token any other way you want, but of course, please
# don't commit secrets to git, especially on a public repository
sphinx_github_changelog_token = ...
In your documentation:
.. code-block:: restructuredtext
.. changelog::
:changelog-url: https://your-project.readthedocs.io/en/stable/#changelog
:github: https://github.com/you/your-project/releases/
:pypi: https://pypi.org/project/your-project/
See the end result for this project on ReadTheDocs__.
.. __: https://sphinx-github-changelog.readthedocs.io/en/stable/#changelog
On the way to continuous delivery, it's important to be able to release easily. One of the criteria for easy releases is that the release doesn't require a commit and a Pull Request. Release Pull Requests usually include 2 parts:
Commitless releases need a way to store the version and the changelog, as close as possible to the code, but actually not in the code.
Setting aside the "version" question, sphinx-github-changelog
aims at providing
a good way of managing the "changelog" part:
The best solution we've found so far for the changelog is to store it in the body of
GitHub Releases
_. That's very practical for maintainers, but it may not be the first
place people will look for it. As far as we've seen, people expect the changelog to
be:
CHANGELOG.rst
,Having the changelog in CHANGELOG.rst
causes a few problems:
Either each PR adds its single line of changelog, but:
This reduces the interest for the whole thing.
Or your changelog is edited at release time. Maybe you're using towncrier_ for fragment-based changelog, but you're not doing commitless releases anymore. You could imagine that the release commit is done by your CI, but this can quickly become annoying, especially if you require Pull Requests.
But there is another way. Instead of providing the changelog, the CHANGELOG.rst
file can hold a link to the changelog. This makes things much easier.
sphinx-github-changelog
encourages you to do that.
Alongside sphinx-github-changelog
, we suggest a few tools that play nice together:
setuptools-scm
_ will compute your version in setup.py
based on git tags.release-drafter
_ will keep a "Draft release" updated as you merge Pull Requests toPyPI API tokens
_!.. _setuptools-scm
: https://pypi.org/project/setuptools-scm/
.. _release-drafter
: https://help.github.com/en/github/administering-a-repository/about-releases
.. _towncrier: https://pypi.org/project/towncrier/
.. _PyPI API tokens
: https://pypi.org/help/#token
.. _ReadTheDocs: https://readthedocs.org/
If you're using all the tools above, then releasing is simple as proof-reading the draft GitHub Release and press "Publish Release". That's it.
conf.py
)sphinx_github_changelog_token
: GitHub API token.
If the repository is public, the token doesn't need any special access (you
can uncheck eveything). If the repository is private, you'll need to give
your token enough access to read the releases. Defaults to the value of the
environment variable SPHINX_GITHUB_CHANGELOG_TOKEN
. If no value is
provided, the build will still pass but the changelog will not be built, and
a link to the changelog-url
will be displayed (if provided).
sphinx_github_changelog_root_repo
(optional): Root url to the repository,
defaults to "https://github.com/". Useful if you're using a self-hosted GitHub
instance.
sphinx_github_changelog_graphql_url
(optional): Url to graphql api, defaults
to "https://api.github.com/graphql". Useful if you're using a self-hosted GitHub
instance.
.. _ReadTheDocs: https://readthedocs.org/
.. code-block:: restructuredtext
.. changelog::
:changelog-url: https://your-project.readthedocs.io/en/stable/changelog.html
:github: https://github.com/you/your-project/releases/
:pypi: https://pypi.org/project/your-project/
Attributes
- ``github`` (**required**): URL to the releases page of the repository.
- ``changelog-url`` (optional): URL to the built version of your changelog.
``sphinx-github-changelog`` will display a link to your built changelog if the GitHub
token is not provided (hopefully, this does not happen in your built documentation)
- ``pypi`` (optional): URL to the PyPI page of the repository. This allows the changelog
to display links to each PyPI release.
You'll notice that each parameter here is not requested in the simplest form but as
very specific URLs from which the program extracts the needed information. This is
done on purpose. If people browse the unbuilt version of your documentation
(e.g. on GitHub or PyPI directly), they'll still be presented with links to the pages
that contain the information they will need, instead of unhelping directives.
.. Below this line is content specific to GitHub / PyPI that will not appear in the
built doc.
.. end-of-index-doc
Check out the built version!
============================
This Readme is also built as a Sphinx documentation, and it includes the changelog.
Interested to see how it looks? Check it out on `our ReadTheDocs space`_.
.. _`our ReadTheDocs space`: https://sphinx-github-changelog.readthedocs.io/en/stable
If you encounter a bug, or want to get in touch, you're always welcome to open a
ticket_.
.. _ticket: https://github.com/peopledoc/sphinx-github-changelog/issues/new
Other links
===========
- `Code of Conduct <CODE_OF_CONDUCT.rst>`_.
- `License <LICENCE.rst>`_.
- `Contributing Guidelines <CONTRIBUTING.rst>`_.