Find a replacement for lerna as it seems to be unmaintained

[adamyeats]

See:

lerna/lerna#2703
lerna/lerna#2716

This is a shame as we get a lot of value out of using lerna, but it's becoming more and more unreliable as time goes on, locks us to npm@6 and this situation doesn't seem to be changing any time soon.

[adamyeats]

@tombruijn This was bought to my attention recently as a possible lerna alternative: https://github.com/atlassian/changesets

Does this sync up in any way with your thinking around changelog generation and other code quality issues?

[tombruijn]

@xadamy That seems quite cool! Is it a full lerna alternative? It's probably written for node, but it would be nice if we could use parts of this, or its ideas, for other integrations as well.

From what I understand it goes like this:

1. A PR author includes .changeset/my_change.md file in the PR.
2. When a release is being made, the files are read and a changelog entry is generated.
3. The .changeset files are removed, leaving an empty directory for a new release.

They seem to differentiate between patch/minor/major as changelog headings. Which seems fair, as that's what determines what kind of release it is.

In other changelogs I see for example bug fixes, improvements, features, etc., as headings which are useful for humans to read, but subjective in what they are at times.

[tombruijn]

https://github.com/brandonbloom/uni and https://esbuild.github.io/ could be interesting as well, at least to see what these kinds of tools do.

[tombruijn]

I've done a write up on Basecamp (private link)

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[tombruijn]

Closing in favor of https://github.com/appsignal/appsignal-agent/issues/678