The purpose of this action is to enforce a change to a ongoing changelog file. Inspired by Keep A Changelog, this action helps development teams to keep a change file up to date as new features or fixes are implemented.

To use, follow the typical GitHub Action uses syntax.

Requires the common Checkout Action as shown below! The enforcement of change is done all using local git commands and requires the repository be checked out!

name: "Pull Request Workflow"
on:
  pull_request:
      types: [opened, synchronize, reopened, ready_for_review, labeled, unlabeled]

jobs:
  # Enforces the update of a changelog file on every pull request 
  changelog:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v1
    - uses: dangoslen/[email protected]
      with:
        changeLogPath: 'CHANGELOG.md'
        skipLabel: 'Skip-Changelog'

There are two properties with sane defaults provided

changeLogPath - default: CHANGELOG.md

• the path to your changelog file. Should be from the perspective of the root directory to git. The file being checked for updates must be either an add (A) or modified (M) status to git to qualify as updated.

skipLabel - default: Skip-Changelog

• the name of a GitHub label that skips execution of the Changelog Enforcer. This is useful for small changes such as configuration that doesn't need to be reflected in the changelog. By using a label, the developer and any reviewer can agree if the change should be reflected in the changelog, and if not can apply a label. The Changelog Enforcer will re-check if the labeled and unlabeled event types are specified in the workflow.

Using this Action and the Changelog Reader, plus a few standard GitHub created Actions, we can keep the changelog of a project up to date and create a GitHub release automatically with contents from the changelog. See this project's release.yml for how to set up a simple workflow to create a new release based on a VERSION file and a changelog.