Changelog generation with git-cliff from conventional commits

Writing CHANGELOGs manually is tedious and inevitably incomplete. Auto-generated changelogs from all commits are noisy and include irrelevant chore and CI commits that users do not care about.

Use git-cliff to generate filtered, categorised changelogs:

# cliff.toml
[changelog]
header = "# Changelog\n\n"
body = """
{% for group, commits in commits | group_by(attribute="group") %}
### {{ group | striptags | trim | upper_first }}
{% for commit in commits %}
- {{ commit.message | upper_first }}{% if commit.breaking %} [**breaking**]{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
{% endfor %}
"""
trim = true

[git]
conventional_commits = true
filter_unconventional = true
commit_parsers = [
  { message = "^feat", group = "Features" },
  { message = "^fix", group = "Bug Fixes" },
  { message = "^chore|^ci|^build", skip = true },
]

In CI:

- uses: orhun/git-cliff-action@v3
  with:
    config: cliff.toml
    args: --latest --strip header
  env:
    OUTPUT: CHANGELOG.md

skip = true for chore/ci/build commits removes noise. Grouping by type gives users a clear view of what changed. --latest generates only the changelog for the current release, not the entire history.