I decided to write about how I handle production changelogs with Git using tags. After bunch of commits to my dev branch and when everything has been tested thouroughly, I merge it to master branch.

When I’m satisfied with the results, I tag the latest commit (HEAD) using the following command:

git tag 1.1

When I have at least two tags, I export the changelog by doing the following:

git log 1.0..1.1 --no-merges --pretty=%s > Changelogs/v1.1.txt

Here is an example scenario:

The following example doesn’t use TDD methodology, so bear with me!

  • Commit 1 to dev branch
  • Commit 2 to dev branch
  • Commit 3 to dev branch

TESTING TIME!

  • Merge dev branch into master
  • Tag master branch as 1.0
  • Deploy!

PROGRAMMING TIME!

  • Commit 4 to dev branch
  • Commit 5 to dev branch
  • Commit 6 to dev branch

TESTING TIME!

  • Merge dev branch into master
  • Tag master branch as 1.1
  • Deploy!
  • Export changelog:
    • git log 1.0..1.1 --no-merges --pretty=%s > Changelogs/v1.1.txt

Done! Now you have changelogs with all commits (without merges) in a clean format. If you want an unordered list items, you can do:

git log 1.0..1.1 --no-merges --pretty="<li>%s</li>" > Changelogs/v1.1.txt

Then you just copy the li‘s to a HTML document of your choice.

Hope this helps.