First Release Error

[patrickleet]

When add this action to a repo that has no releases yet, it throws an error.

Maybe it should just generate and empty changelog? Or a message "First release".

I am using this as a workaround to conditionally run the step only if previous tags exist via if: env.previous_tag:

    - name: previous tag
      run: |
        # set previous_tag to the last tag in the repo
        # or if the command throws an error, set it to nothing
        previous_tag=$(git describe --tags --abbrev=0 2>/dev/null || echo "")
        echo "previous_tag=$previous_tag" >> $GITHUB_ENV

    - name: Generate changelog
      id: changelog
      if: env.previous_tag
      uses: jaywcjlove/changelog-generator@main
      with:
        token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

[jaywcjlove]

 - name: Generate changelog
   id: changelog
   uses: jaywcjlove/changelog-generator@main
+   if: env.previous_tag
   with:
    token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

This can solve the problem? @patrickleet

[patrickleet]

yea, with the previous_tag step that sets it to "" or the previous tag - if it's "", then that will evaluate to false, so it won't run in that case

[jaywcjlove]

@patrickleet thx!

[patrickleet]

I trimmed the step that creates env.previous_tag down a bit:

   - run: echo "previous_tag=$(git describe --tags --abbrev=0 2>/dev/null || echo '')" >> $GITHUB_ENV

This is also required for the workaround to work, otherwise it will never run

[jaywcjlove]

@patrickleet thx!