Automatically generate release notes

[slonopotamus]

Subj. The plan is to use release-drafter GitHub Action.

[slonopotamus]

Looks like this thing is working.

It will update release draft each time a commit is merged into master branch. Release draft is automatically named as $latest_release + 1. So when we push a new release tag, it will automatically pick up release draft and create a proper release.

Note that release-drafter supports semantic versioning (major.minor.patch) but it is not set up currently, so we continue to live in v0.0.x era.

[jonpas]

One thing to note, manual edits of the release-drafter created draft will be lost next time it runs. And if you create a new draft, it will actually use the latest draft and get rid of it just the same.

[slonopotamus]

Well, until this day, ue4-docker didn't have neither releases (only git tags) nor drafts at all :D So hopefully release-drafter overwriting drafts is not a problem.

[jonpas]

Indeed, just thought I'd note that. :D

[slonopotamus]

It looks like release-drafter is not adding entries for commits that are pushed directly to master branch =/

[adamrehn]

Oh bummer, should I create pull requests for new changes to ensure they get picked up in the release notes?

[slonopotamus]

I'll possibly just search for another tool.

[slonopotamus]

I see that https://github.com/adamrehn/ue4-docker/releases/tag/v0.0.101 includes changes even for direct pushes to master. @adamrehn did you add them manually or release-drafter was improved and no longer relies on PRs so this issue is no longer an issue?

[adamrehn]

@slonopotamus I added them manually when I converted the release from a draft to being published, since there were only two of them. It'd be nice if we could find a tool that does this automatically (perhaps including a link to the commit after each message to provide consistency with the PR links.)

[slonopotamus]

It looks like we can fix this with release-drafter. I'll try to mess with its config a bit. release-drafter/release-drafter#552 (comment)

[slonopotamus]

I also found this: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/releasing-projects-on-github/automatically-generated-release-notes

[adamrehn]

@slonopotamus when I manually edited the release notes for release v0.0.102 just now, I formatted the entry for my commit in the way that I think looks the most consistent with the entries for PRs. I don't know whether we can get that generated automatically of course (particularly with the short commit hash rather than the full one), but it's there as an example of what we might like to aim for if possible.