GitHub Release Notes Generator

🚀 Automatically generate beautifully formatted release notes from your GitHub pull requests

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✨ Features

• 📝 Automatically fetches merged pull requests from GitHub
• 🏷️ Categorizes pull requests based on labels (Features, Bug Fixes, Documentation, etc.)
• 📄 Generates formatted markdown output
• ⚙️ Customizable categorization logic
• 🔧 Simple configuration using environment variables
• 📧 Email notification support with customizable templates
• 📄 Attachments of generated release notes (PDF and Markdown)
• 🔄 Support for generating release notes between any two versions
• 🎯 Flexible version specification via .env or command line

📋 Prerequisites

• Node.js (v12 or higher)
• GitHub Personal Access Token with repo scope
• npm or yarn package manager

🚀 Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone <repository-url>
   cd github-release-notes-generator

2. Install dependencies:

   npm install

3. Copy .env-example to .env and configure your environment variables:

   cp .env-example .env

⚙️ Configuration

Required Environment Variables

Create or modify your .env file with the following required settings:

# GitHub Configuration (Required)
GITHUB_OWNER=your-username-or-org
GITHUB_REPO=your-repository-name
GITHUB_TOKEN=your-github-personal-access-token

# Release Versions (Optional)
END_VERSION=v2.0.0
START_VERSION=v1.0.0  # Optional - if not specified, will use previous release

# Email Settings (Optional - for email notifications)
EMAIL_FROM=[email protected]
EMAIL_TO=[email protected]
EMAIL_CC=[email protected]
SMTP_HOST=smtp.example.com
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_SECURE=true
SMTP_USER=your-smtp-username
SMTP_PASS=your-smtp-password

To get a GitHub Personal Access Token:

1. Go to GitHub Settings > Developer settings > Personal access tokens
2. Click "Generate new token"
3. Select the repo scope
4. Copy the generated token and add it to your .env file

💻 Usage

Basic Usage

You can specify release versions in three ways:

1. Using Command Line Arguments (Highest Priority):

   # Generate notes between two specific versions
   node releaseNoteGenerator.js v2.0.0 v1.0.0
   
   # Generate notes from previous release to v2.0.0
   node releaseNoteGenerator.js v2.0.0

2. Using Environment Variables in .env file:

   END_VERSION=v2.0.0
   START_VERSION=v1.0.0  # Optional

   Then run:

   node releaseNoteGenerator.js

3. Mix and Match:

   • Set default versions in .env
   • Override when needed via command line

   # Override both versions
   node releaseNoteGenerator.js v2.1.0 v2.0.0
   
   # Override only end version (will use START_VERSION from .env)
   node releaseNoteGenerator.js v2.1.0

Output

The generator will create two files in the output directory:

• release-notes-{version}.md - Markdown format
• release-notes-{version}.pdf - PDF format with styling

Email Notifications

If email settings are configured in .env, you can send release notes via email:

const generator = new ReleaseNoteGenerator(owner, repo, token);
await generator.generateReleaseNotes(endVersion, startVersion, {
	generateEmail: true,
	sendEmail: true,
});

📝 Pull Request Categorization

Pull requests are automatically categorized based on their labels:

• Features: PRs with 'feature' or 'enhancement' labels
• Bug Fixes: PRs with 'bug' or 'fix' labels
• Documentation: PRs with 'documentation' label
• Other: PRs without any of the above labels

🎨 Customization

• Add your logo at ./assets/logo.png
• Add header background at ./assets/header-bg.png
• Customize email template in ./Template/email-template.eml
• Modify categorization logic in categorizePullRequests() method

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

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Made with ❤️ for the GitHub community