eanlain/release_notes

An easy way to write, manage, and incorporate release notes into your project

ReleaseNotes

An easy way to incorporate and manage release notes.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'release_notes'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install release_notes

Getting Started

If you're looking to use ReleaseNotes with Rails you will need to run the install generator:

$ rails generate release_notes:install

The generator will install a ReleaseNotes initializer containing various configuration options. When you are done, you are ready to add a ReleaseNote model to using the following generator:

$ rails generate release_notes ReleaseNote

This will generate a model named ReleaseNote in your Rails project and will add a route in your config/routes.rb file at /release_notes. You can choose to use a different model name, but after doing so you must update config.release_note_model in the release_notes initializer with the name of the model you generated.

Be sure to migrate your database.

$ rake db:migrate

Usage

Generate a new release note template

To create a new release note run the following:

$ release_notes new

A new release note markdown file will be generated and saved to the release_notes folder. Open the file in your favorite editor and fill out the relevant sections to your heart's content.

Generate a new release note from the console

To add release notes bullets through the console try the following:

$ release_notes new -m

This will also generate a release note markdown file, but all the bullets entered in the console will appear in the relevant sections in the markdown file.

Update ReleaseNote model with new release notes

After finalizing your release note markdown file be sure to update your ReleaseNote model by running:

$ release_notes update

If you ever want to update a previous release note and/or want to rebuild your ReleaseNotes model and README you can run the following:

$ release_notes update -r

Getting Help

To get additional help on release_notes commands or to see all available options just run:

$ release_notes --help [command]

Rake Tasks

You can also run the release_notes new, release_notes update, and release_notes update -r commands using the following rake tasks from within the project:

release_notes new

$ rake release_notes:new

release_notes update

$ rake release_notes:update

release_notes update -r

$ rake release_notes:rebuild

Show the latest ReleaseNote version

To access a link to the latest release note just include the following snippet into your view:

<%= release_note_indicator %>

View release notes in your application

To view all of your release notes just visit http://yourapp/release_notes (or whatever route is mounted in your routes.rb file) in your application. To view a specific version just visit http://yourapp/release_notes/:version where :version is the release notes version that you are looking to view using underscores instead of periods (i.e. 0_1_0).

Contributing

1. Fork it ( http://github.com/eanlain/release_notes/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request