[ Streams ] Version number changes

[Saq Imtiaz]

If you drop by https://saqimtiaz.github.io/streams/ you will see that the latest plugin version is now 1.2.21

This is functionally identical to the previous publicly available release 0.2.19.

There is no significance to the increase in version number for users.

The motivation for this post was to head off any surprise or questions as to why the version number changed.

As an end user this is all that you really need to know and can stop reading here if you wish.

Why the change?

I've been revising the development and release workflow to be more efficient. This has included adopting the Semantic Versioning and Conventional Commits specs, which amongst other things will make it easy to provide users with a changelog for each release. See for example:  https://saqimtiaz.github.io/streams/#CHANGELOG

Updates for new releases

Overall my approach is likely to be to make small frequent updates and new releases when I have the time to work on Streams. A changelog will make it easier for users to know what has changed. I also have in the works an opt-in feature for Streams whereby you can be notified in your wiki when a new version of the plugin is available.

I ended up taking some unplanned time off the last week. I am aware that there has been some Streams related conversation during this time and will catch up in the next couple of days.

Cheers,
Saq

[PMario]

Hi Saq,

Didn't know about Conventional Commits. Looks good.

How did you create your changelog?

I'd be interested in a similar workflow for my own plugins.

At the moment I'm manually creating my change logs, which is a lot of "boring" work

-mario

[Saq Imtiaz]

@pmario I can relate.. if I had to manually craft change logs from scratch that would likely take up all the time I have for TW tinkering.

If you use the Conventional Commits spec for your commit messages, there are a lot of tools that can help generate changelogs:

https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/#tooling-for-conventional-commits

I am using Standard version, though I use it only to bump the version files, and generate the changelog. You can configure which steps you want it to skip. I commit the changes and create the git tag myself. This also allows me to review and hand massage the changelog if needed. What is great is that the tool is smart enough not to clobber your manual changes when you create the changelog for the next version.

Standard version uses the underlying conventional changelog library which also has a lower level CLI: https://github.com/conventional-changelog/conventional-changelog/tree/master/packages/conventional-changelog-cli

Personally I think the Conventional Commits spec works well for TW plugins. It forces you to try to write a user friendly first line for your commit message, and technical details can go in later lines (the body). Each commit message starts with a type, eg fix, feat, docs. And you can specify those yourself and also decide which ones end up in the changelog.

Some of the other tools from conventional-changelog may be of interest as well:https://github.com/conventional-changelog

There may be better tools out there but I've been using these for some time on other projects so I am very used to them and have found them reliable.

Cheers,
Saq

[Joshua Fontany]

That looks fantastic and may prevent me from typing "stash this" a bunch of times in my commit messages. ;) Thanks.

Best.

Joshua F