Can `scriv` help annotate changes with PR links?

[sirosen]

Very often, we want to link to issues and PRs in our changelogs. This provides a good way to look up the specifics of a change when the exact meaning of the changelog entry is unclear.

For issues, it's very simple: put a link area into your fragment template. Done! ✅

But what should you do if you want to link to a PR (or, to be less github-centric, MR)? This flow depends upon the PR already having been opened. I wonder, could scriv be able to find this info at collect time? It would have to be able to call some hook (maybe one which I write, as a user initially, and then later something as a pre-set option?) to look at the GitHub API.

I'm thinking about this, and also about potentially putting some string into the fragments themselves, like SCRIV_PR_LINKSTUB, which can then be replaced via some bot user in GitHub Actions.

Is there a role for scriv in this process, if only to provide guidance on this in the docs?

[sirosen]

I think this whole issue is somewhat off-base, in retrospect. We've started using scriv, and I don't see a good workflow here.

I think stubbing in some macro-text in your fragments and then replacing it later is the only thing that could work. It just seems super-fragile and not very much worth it. If you really want links like that, probably just use towncrier or something.