branchnews helps you use branch-based file names with towncrier. It is designed for use with GitHub, but can probably work with other collaboration platforms as well.

If you are not already familiar with towncrier, it is a great tool for generating changelogs, based on news fragment files.

However, a difficulty arises if you want to record a news fragment for a PR (pull request) that does not correspond to an existing issue. In such cases, it is hard to choose a name for the fragment file while preparing the PR, because you do not know the number the PR will receive, until after it has already been opened.

The solution provided by branchnews is to let you instead record the fragment under a filename based on your GitHub username and the name of your topic branch, like this:

USERNAME.BRANCHNAME.branchnews.NEWS_TYPE.txt

The

$ branchnews create

command helps you generate this file.

Later, when you are ready to generate a changelog with towncrier, first use the

$ branchnews rename

command to automatically rename the fragment files, so that they now incorporate the correct PR numbers.

Requirements

The $ branchnews rename command uses git log in order to associate USERNAME/BRANCHNAME combinations with the PR numbers that were eventually assigned. In order for this to work, you must observe the following rules in your development process:

• Each time a PR is merged, you must accept the standard GitHub merge commit message of the form,

  Merge pull request #NUMBER from USERNAME/BRANCHNAME
  

• No single GitHub USERNAME may reuse a given BRANCHNAME for two or more separate PRs, within a given release cycle. (This is probably just good practice anyway.)

Furthermore, for the sake of simplicity, the $ branchnews create command requires you to have a configured fragments directory, in your towncrier config. That is,

• Your towncrier config must define the directory key.

See https://towncrier.readthedocs.io/en/stable/configuration.html.

Usage

Configuration

branchnews does not currently support any configuration options of its own, but it does rely on your towncrier configuration. As stated above, you must at least define the directory key.

Furthermore, you probably should define the issue_format key in the way indicated here, i.e. like this:

issue_format = "[#{issue}](https://github.com/example/my-project/issues/{issue})"

so that issue and PR numbers link to the appropriate pages at GitHub. (If you didn't want your changelog entries to link to those pages, there was probably no reason to be using branchnews in the first place.)

Note: The issue_format suggested above will work for both issues and PRs. GitHub automatically redirects URLs ending with issues/NNN to pull/NNN when the number in fact belongs to a PR, not an issue.

Preparing a PR

When any contributor to your project is preparing a PR, they should generate a news fragment file by invoking

$ branchnews create

and then following the on-screen prompts.

The very first prompt asks if there is an associated issue number. This is so that this one procedure can be used whether there is an issue number or not.

A session for which there is an associated issue number might look like this:

$ branchnews create
Issue number (leave blank to use branch name instead): 1234
What type of news is it?
(0): Security
(1): Removed
(2): Deprecated
(3): Added
(4): Changed
(5): Fixed
Type: 3
Created 1234.added.txt
Please edit the file to provide a release note.

(The menu of alternatives for the news type is generated directly from your towncrier config.)

A session for which there is not an associated issue number might look like this:

$ branchnews create
Issue number (leave blank to use branch name instead): 
GitHub username: example
Branch name is fix-that-pesky-bug
What type of news is it?
(0): Security
(1): Removed
(2): Deprecated
(3): Added
(4): Changed
(5): Fixed
Type: 5
Created example.fix-that-pesky-bug.branchnews.fixed.txt
Please edit the file to provide a release note.

After generating the file, the contributor should edit it, recording the desired news entry, and then git commit the file, before opening a PR.

Note that Git allows a wide variety of symbols to appear in branch names (including slashes and dots), and this is no problem with branchnews. The branch name is percent-encoded before becoming a segment of the generated filename.

Generating a change log

Before you can generate your changelog with towncrier, first use

$ branchnews rename

to automatically rename all the fragment files having names of the form USERNAME.BRANCHNAME.branchnews.NEWS_TYPE.txt. After renaming, they will instead have names of the form NNN.NEWS_TYPE.txt, where the correct PR number NNN has been obtained using git log.

Remember, this will only work if you have followed the rules stated above, under Requirements. In case there were any lapses (maybe one time you failed to accept the standard merge commit message for a PR), then the branchnews rename command will still automatically rename all the files it can, and it will also print a list of those files that it could not rename. Using the USERNAME and BRANCHNAME for any such files, you should be able to manually track down the right PR numbers.

The branchnews rename command will also automatically stage the renames, but it will not perform a commit. You should do the commit manually (maybe with a simple commit message like, "Rename branchnews files").

After committing the renames, you can proceed to use towncrier as normal.