[changelog] Changelog is generated even if an external file is specified

[charphi]

Steps to Reproduce

1. Set an external changelog file in a GitHub release section

Expected Behaviour

No changelog should be generated.
JReleaser should check that the external file exists during dry-run.

Actual Behaviour

Changelog is generated.
JReleaser doesn't check that the external file exists during dry-run.

[aalmiray]

I can't replicate this error with JReleaser 1.2.0.

1. git clone https://github.com/aalmiray/foobar.git
2. edit jreleaser.yml so that the release section looks like this

release:
  github:
    overwrite: true
    sign: true
    discussionCategoryName: Announcements
    changelog:
      external: CHANGELOG.md
      preset: conventional-commits
      formatted: ALWAYS
      format: '- {{commitShortHash}} {{commitTitle}}'
      contributors:
        format: '- {{contributorName}}{{#contributorUsernameAsLink}} ({{.}}){{/contributorUsernameAsLink}}'

3. Create a file named CHANGELOG.md at the root with

## Changelog

 - Fixed stuff

4. Run jreleaser changelog -g

[INFO]  Project version set to 1.0.0
[INFO]  Release is not snapshot
[INFO]  Timestamp is 2022-09-24T14:57:11.769714-05:00
[INFO]  HEAD is at 4df324c
[INFO]  Platform is osx-x86_64
[INFO]  dry-run set to true
[INFO]  Reading changelog from CHANGELOG.md
[INFO]  Generating changelog: out/jreleaser/release/CHANGELOG.md
[DEBUG] ## Changelog

 - Fixed stuff


[INFO]  Calculating checksums

5. Run jreleaser release --dry-run.

The changelog at out/jreleaser/release/CHANGELOG.md matches the content of CHANGELOG.md at the root.

[charphi]

In my config, I use the jreleaser-maven-plugin in a module of a multi-module Maven project.

The external changelog is located on parent/root project and is specified like that:

<external>${project.basedir}/../CHANGELOG.md</external>

[aalmiray]

Aha, then I guess what could happen is that the value of <external> is resolved to a blank string but that would be really hard given the explicit value you've shown. The maven plugin uses the same model classes as core (in v1.2.0) thus testing on CLI should yield the same results as testing with the maven plugin. Something else may be at play here.

[charphi]

After some digging, I think that the changelog is generated by the ChangelogWorkflowItem whatever the content of JReleaserContext.

[aalmiray]

I'm unable to reproduce the problem with 1.2.0.

[charphi]

Strange.
Here is a way to reproduce the problem from a real project:

1. clone the project https://github.com/nbbrd/picocsv
2. set the env var JRELEASER_GITHUB_TOKEN to a dummy value such as 123
3. run the command mvn clean install -DskipTests -Pfull-release -Djreleaser.dry.run
4. the generated changelog target\jreleaser\release\CHANGELOG.md is different from the expected changelog target\CHANGELOG.md

Note that the GitHub release page has the expected changelog.

[aalmiray]

Found the issue. Thank you for the reproducer! 😅

[aalmiray]

Released in v1.3.0 -> https://github.com/jreleaser/jreleaser/releases/tag/v1.3.0