What is the bot-list used for?

[laughedelic]

I saw the bot-list package and I'm wondering what it is used for.

I searched the code, but got confused: I see there is some filtering for changelog, but then I also see releases like this one which mention @dependabot-preview[bot].

[hipstersmoothie]

bot-list is just common accounts we don't want included in the changelog (like dependabot) and other parts of auto. If you see a bot missing feel free to make a PR and add one.

Why is that account there? GitHub or dependabot keeps changing how the bot is displayed so it's a game of cat and mouse

[laughedelic]

I was thinking of adding mergify[bot] (associated with @Mergifyio, but it's a different account), but doubted if it belongs to this list.

I actually want to see Dependabot's PRs in the release notes. Aren't dependency updates valuable for the changelog?

[hipstersmoothie]

from a library point of view (IMO) no, but I could see how from an app perspective it might be more userful. In our case it produced a wall of dep updates in the changelog which drowned out the real updates

[laughedelic]

I see, different languages, different perspective. I can see JS dependencies being updated every minute 😄

Since libraries on the JVM are distributed as compiled packages, binary compatibility is a big deal. It happens sometimes that an innocent dependency update introduces a dependency conflict or a binary incompatibility for the consumers. So knowing which dependencies got updated might be important when you look at a library's release notes.

I understand that this list is static at the moment. What do you think about making it configurable?

It also seems like an overlap with the omit-release-notes plugin.

[hipstersmoothie]

I'm open to a "disableBotList" option. That plugin is to deal with those dev update tools that sometimes include a "release notes" section that got picked up.

[hipstersmoothie]

Or even better a botList option were you can override the default