Reading a markdown file with the progress in the project is easier than reading a commit log.

Automatic changelog generation from commit messages is a fairly common pattern nowadays. There is a project called conventional-changelog that generates a changelog from commit messages that follow a convention.

Commit message convention

The most common convention is the angular commit messages convention which is detailed here.

Setup

• Install:

npm install standard-version -D

• Add a script target to your package.json:

{
  "scripts": {
    "release": "standard-version"
  }
}

• Optionally : To automatically push the new git commit and tag plus publish to npm add a postrelease script:

{
  "scripts": {
    "release": "standard-version",
    "postrelease": "git push --follow-tags origin master && npm publish"
  }
}

Releasing

Simply run:

npm run release

Based on the commit messages major | minor | patch is automatically determined. To explicitly specify a version you can specify --release-as e.g.:

npm run release -- --release-as minor