CHANGELOG not produced by release process

[MikeMcC399]

Problem description

Although the release job in the .github/workflows/main.yml is set up with the extra_plugins: parameter @semantic-release/changelog no changelog is generated:

      - name: Semantic Release
        uses: cycjimmy/semantic-release-action@v3
        id: semantic
        with:
          branch: master
          extra_plugins: |
            @semantic-release/git
            @semantic-release/changelog

Steps to reproduce the issue

View https://github.com/cypress-io/github-action and note that there is no file CHANGELOG.md present.

View the release log for PR #677 which triggered release v5.0.1 automatically.

Note that no changelog is called. If there were, then it would appear as:

 › ℹ  Start step "prepare" of plugin "@semantic-release/changelog"

Expected behavior

When a release is generated through cycjimmy/semantic-release-action then a CHANGELOG.md should be created or updated in https://github.com/cypress-io/github-action.

Analysis

The documentation for cycjimmy/semantic-release-action: extra_plugins says:

"When using this option, please make sure that these plugins are also mentioned in your semantic release config's plugins array."

Referring to the related documentation about semantic-release's configuration file, none of the options has been set:

• A .releaserc file, written in YAML or JSON, with optional extensions: .yaml/.yml/.json/.js
• A release.config.js file that exports an object
• A release key in the project's package.json file

This is the reason that no CHANGELOG.md has been created.

Suggested Fix

Create the file https://github.com/cypress-io/github-action/.releaserc with the contents:

{
  "plugins": [
    "@semantic-release/commit-analyzer",
    "@semantic-release/release-notes-generator",
    "@semantic-release/changelog",
    "@semantic-release/npm",
    "@semantic-release/github",
    "@semantic-release/git"
  ]
}

This also fixes the issue that @semantic-release/git does not run, for the same reason that it is also not correctly configured.

References

• https://github.com/semantic-release/changelog
• https://github.com/semantic-release/git

[MikeMcC399]

• PR Configure semantic-release plugins #752 is submitted to resolve this issue

[mschile]

@MikeMcC399, I think we should just remove the extra_plugins from the workflow and use the release notes on the GitHub release instead of adding a changelog.

[MikeMcC399]

@mschile

I think we should just remove the extra_plugins from the workflow and use the release notes on the GitHub release instead of adding a changelog.

That's OK with me.

I'll close the current PR and submit a new one to clean things up.