createGithubReleases: true -> body is too long (max is 125000 characters)

[sethidden]

This is #174 but instead of PR descriptions it's about GitHUb release descriptions being too long when createGithubReleases is true

Click to expand

logs from changesets/action@v1

🦋  warn ===============================IMPORTANT!===============================
🦋  warn You are in prerelease mode so packages will be published to the rc
🦋  warn         dist tag except for packages that have not had normal releases which will be published to latest
🦋  warn ----------------------------------------------------------------------
🦋  info npm info redacted-package-name
🦋  info redacted-package-name is being published because our local version (2.5.0-rc.2) has not been published on npm
🦋  info Publishing redacted-package-name at "2.5.0-rc.2"
🦋  success packages published successfully:
🦋  redacted-package-name
🦋  Creating git tag...
🦋  New tag:  redacted-package-name
Done in 24.45s.
/usr/bin/git push origin --tags
To https://github.com/REDACTED/REDACTED
 * [new tag]         redacted-package-name@2.5.0-rc.2 -> redacted-package-name@2.5.0-rc.2
Deprecation: [@octokit/request-error] `error.code` is deprecated, use `error.status`.
    at RequestError.get (/home/runner/work/_actions/changesets/action/v1/dist/index.js:1:324267)
    at createRelease (/home/runner/work/_actions/changesets/action/v1/dist/index.js:59:78814)
    at async Promise.all (index 0)
    at async runPublish (/home/runner/work/_actions/changesets/action/v1/dist/index.js:59:79464)
    at async /home/runner/work/_actions/changesets/action/v1/dist/index.js:59:75689
Error: HttpError: Validation Failed: {"resource":"Release","code":"custom","field":"body","message":"body is too long (maximum is 125000 characters)"}
Error: Validation Failed: {"resource":"Release","code":"custom","field":"body","message":"body is too long (maximum is 125000 characters)"}

Indeed, my CHANGELOG.md is 231,000 and 609,000 lines long respectively (depends on which one you use :P), which is higher than the 125,000 limit imposed by GitHub.

I assume this is due to the fact that changesets/action created a release using the entire contents of CHANGELOG.md (which would have the changesets removed from repo and applied to changelog)? I guess it'd be possible to write some hacky regex to publish only the latest markdown headline, so it always shows only the latest version in the release.

---

This was actually discussed here as well #157 (comment)

I know this error was described as highly unlikely to happen in the above link, but it's legitimately happening to us. This is a 2 year old project that used to use the conventional commits PR generator, and the changelog is legitimately this large.

[Andarist]

I assume this is due to the fact that changesets/action created a release using the entire contents of CHANGELOG.md

This is not supposed to happen - if it happens then it should be considered a bug.

I guess it'd be possible to write some hacky regex to publish only the latest markdown headline, so it always shows only the latest version in the release.

This is kinda what we do, IIRC. Could you recheck with the source code and your CHANGELOG.md what was sent with that request?

[sethidden]

@Andarist OK I know why it's happening

The top level entry in the CHANGELOG for the package that I was releasing is:

# Change Log

## 2.5.0-rc.1

### Minor Changes

- some changes here

however, the changesets/action@v1 run that failed due to the "max 125000 characters" error was triggered by a commit to main which:

• bumped the version from 2.5.0-rc.1 to 2.5.0-rc.2 (manually)
• included no changesets at all, so the above version bump was again, manual, and the action went along to publish the package

This means that there is no changelog entry for the new manually changed 2.5.0-rc.2

The action is trying to push the whole CHANGELOG.md due to the implementation of getChangelogEntry.
It will return the whole changelog if the version argument in getChangelogEntry is asking to find a Changelog entry for a version that's not present in the changelog.

Here's a repro case where getChangelogEntry unexpectedly (?) returns the whole changelog:

const contents = `
# Change Log 

## 2.5.0-rc.2

### Minor Changes

- Changes from rc2

## 2.5.0-rc.1

### Minor Changes

- Changes from rc1
`

// rc.3 is not present in the changelog above, unlike rc.1 and rc.2
const versionThatDoesntExistInTheChangelog = '2.5.0-rc.3' 

console.log(getChangelogEntry(contents, versionThatDoesntExistInTheChangelog))

Output of console.log (click to expand)

{
  content: '# Change Log\n' +
    '\n' +
    '## 2.5.0-rc.2\n' +
    '\n' +
    '### Minor Changes\n' +
    '\n' +
    '-   Changes from rc2\n' +
    '\n' +
    '## 2.5.0-rc.1\n' +
    '\n' +
    '### Minor Changes\n' +
    '\n' +
    '-   Changes from rc1\n',
  highestLevel: 2
}

---

On one hand, I broke the repo (from changesets/action perspective) on my own wish due to the version bump commit to main, but on the other hand, I guess getChangelogEntry could hold the user's hand a bit more here. After all, the main problem here seems to be "you're trying to publish a package version for which there is no change log entry", and not "the changelog is too long". The current error message points the user to the latter, while the culprit is the former.

Perhaps a console.info saying "Can't find current package version in changelog, defaulting to whole changelog"?

Additionally, in the case above, the publish: script will be ran and the package will be published to the NPM registry correctly, but the GitHub release will fail.

[sethidden]

Closing as stale. Workaround is described above.