GenerateReleaseNotes V2 Node based Cross Platform Task

Releases

Generates release notes for a build or release. the file can be a format of your choice

• Can be used on any type of Azure DevOps Agents (Windows, Mac or Linux)
• For releases, uses same logic as Azure DevOps Release UI to work out the work items and commits/changesets associated with the release
• 2.50.x onwards, add debugging and development tools
• 2.49.x onwards, adds an array of direct parent and child workitems for the workitems associated with the release. These can only be referenced in Handlebar based templates
• 2.47.x onwards, adds details of the files included in any commit or changeset so they can be displayed in Handlebar based templates
• 2.46.x onwards, adds tests to the list of items that can be displayed in Handlebar based templates
• 2.34.x onwards, extends the PR functionality to check for any PRs associated with commits associated with the release - not this functionality is only usable using Handlebars based templates
• 2.33.x onwards, allow limited functionality to list the PR associated with triggering of the build/release
• 2.27.x onwards, thanks to the work of KennethScott, adds support for Handlbars based templates as well as the bespoke version used previously.
• 2.17.x onwards supports operation in a build whether YAML or legacy, getting the commits/changesets associated with the build.
• 2.0.x onwards supports tag filtering in the work items listed in a report. A report can have many WILOOPs with different filters. 2.18.x & 2.19.x add support for advanced work item filtering
• The Azure DevOps REST APIs have a limitation that by default they only return 200 items. As a release could include more Work Items or ChangeSets/Commits. A workaround for this has been added #349. Since version 2.12.x this feature has been defaulted on. To disable it set the variable ReleaseNotes.Fix349 to false

IMPORTANT - There have been two major versions of this extension, this is because

• V1 which used the preview APIs and is required if using TFS 2018 as this only has older APIs. This version is not longer shipped in extension download from GitHub
• V2 was a complete rewrite by @gregpakes using the Node Azure DevOps SDK, with minor but breaking changes in the template format and that oAuth needs enabling on the agent running the tasks .

Usage

As with my original PowerShell based Release Notes task which this releases, this task generates a release notes file based on a template passed into the tool.

This task can be using inside a UI based Build or Release or a Multistage YAML Pipeline.

In the case of a Release, the data source for the generated Release Notes is the Azure DevOps REST API's comparison calls that are also used by the Azure DevOps UI to show the associated Work items and commit/changesets between two releases. Hence this task should generate the same list of items as the Azure DevOps UI.

Note: That this comparison is only done against the primary build artifact linked to the Release

If used in the build or YAML pipeline the release notes are based on the current build only.

The Template

There are sample templates that just produce basic releases notes for both Git and TFVC based releases in all available template formats. Most samples are for Markdown file generation, but it is possible to generate any other format such as HTML

---

It is STRONGLY recommended that the newer Handlebars based templating model is use. It is more flexible and all future enhancements will target it.

At some point in the future the legacy templating format will be deprecated and removed from the task.

---

Handlebar Templates

Since 2.27.x it has been possible to create your templates using Handlebars syntax. A template written in this format is as follows

# Notes for release  {{releaseDetails.releaseDefinition.name}}    
**Release Number**  : {{releaseDetails.name}}
**Release completed** : {{releaseDetails.modifiedOn}}     
**Build Number**: {{buildDetails.id}}
**Compared Release Number**  : {{compareReleaseDetails.name}}    
**Build Trigger PR Number**: {{lookup buildDetails.triggerInfo 'pr.number'}} 

# Associated Pull Requests ({{pullRequests.length}})
{{#forEach pullRequests}}
{{#if isFirst}}### Associated Pull Requests (only shown if  PR) {{/if}}
*  **PR {{this.id}}**  {{this.title}}
{{/forEach}}

# Builds with associated WI/CS/Tests ({{builds.length}})
{{#forEach builds}}
{{#if isFirst}}## Builds {{/if}}
##  Build {{this.build.buildNumber}}
{{#forEach this.commits}}
{{#if isFirst}}### Commits {{/if}}
- CS {{this.id}}
{{/forEach}}
{{#forEach this.workitems}}
{{#if isFirst}}### Workitems {{/if}}
- WI {{this.id}}
{{/forEach}} 
{{#forEach this.tests}}
{{#if isFirst}}### Tests {{/if}}
- Test {{this.id}} 
   -  Name: {{this.testCase.name}}
   -  Outcome: {{this.outcome}}
{{/forEach}} 
{{/forEach}}

# Global list of WI ({{workItems.length}})
{{#forEach this.workItems}}
{{#if isFirst}}### WorkItems {{/if}}
*  **{{this.id}}**  {{lookup this.fields 'System.Title'}}
   - **WIT** {{lookup this.fields 'System.WorkItemType'}} 
   - **Tags** {{lookup this.fields 'System.Tags'}}
   - **Assigned** {{#with (lookup this.fields 'System.AssignedTo')}} {{displayName}} {{/with}}
   - **Description** {{{lookup this.fields 'System.Description'}}}
   - **Parents**
{{#forEach this.relations}}
{{#if (contains this.attributes.name 'Parent')}}
{{#with (lookup_a_work_item ../../relatedWorkItems  this.url)}}
      - {{this.id}} - {{lookup this.fields 'System.Title'}} 
{{/with}}
{{/if}}
{{/forEach}} 
   - **Children**
{{#forEach this.relations}}
{{#if (contains this.attributes.name 'Child')}}
{{#with (lookup_a_work_item ../../relatedWorkItems  this.url)}}
      - {{this.id}} - {{lookup this.fields 'System.Title'}} 
{{/with}}
{{/if}}
{{/forEach}} 
{{/forEach}} 

# Global list of CS ({{commits.length}})
{{#forEach commits}}
{{#if isFirst}}### Associated commits{{/if}}
* ** ID{{this.id}}** 
   -  **Message:** {{this.message}}
   -  **Commited by:** {{this.author.displayName}} 
   -  **FileCount:** {{this.changes.length}} 
{{#forEach this.changes}}
      -  **File path (TFVC or TfsGit):** {{this.item.path}}  
      -  **File filename (GitHub):** {{this.filename}}  
{{/forEach}}
{{/forEach}}

IMPORTANT Handlebars based templates have different objects available to the original template.

What is done behind the scenes is that each {{properties}} block in the template is expanded by Handlebars. The property objects available to get data from at runtime are:

Common objects

• workItems – the array of work item associated with the release
• commits – the array of commits associated with the release
• pullRequests - the array of PRs referenced by the commits in the release
• tests - the array of unique tests associated with any of the builds linked to the release or the release itself
• builds - the array of the build artifacts that CS and WI are associated with. Note that this is a object with three properties
  • build - the build details
  • commits - the commits associated with this build
  • workitems - the work items associated with the build
  • tests - the work items associated with the build
• relatedWorkItems – the array of all work item associated with the release plus their direct parents or children

Release objects (only available in a release)

• releaseDetails – the release details of the release that the task was triggered for.
• compareReleaseDetails - the the previous successful release that comparisons are being made against
• releaseTest - the list of test associated with the release e.g. integration tests

Build objects

• buildDetails – if running in a build, the build details of the build that the task is running in. If running in a release it is the build that triggered the release.

Note: To dump all possible values use the form {{json propertyToDump}} this runs a custom Handlebars extension to do the expansion (See below) Note: if a field contains escaped HTML encode data this can be returned its original format with triple {{{ {{{lookup this.fields 'System.Description'}}}

Handlebar Extensions

With 2.28.x support was added for Handlebars extensions in a number of ways:

The Handbars Helpers extension library is also pre-load, this provides over 120 useful extensions to aid in data manipulation when templating. They are used the form

## To confirm the handbars-helpers is work
The year is {{year}} 
We can capitalize "foo bar baz" {{capitalizeAll "foo bar baz"}}

In addition to the Handbars Helpers extension library, there is also a custom Helper `json' that will dump the contents of any object. This is useful when working out what can be displayed in a template.

## The contents of the build object
{{json buildDetails}}

Also there is support for custom extension libraries. These are provided via an Azure DevOps task parameter holding a block of JavaScript which is loaded into the Handlebars templating engine. The

A sample extension code is in the form

module.exports = {foo: function () {return 'Returns foo';}};

And can be consumed in a template as shown below

## To confirm our custom extension works
We can call our custom extension {{foo}}

As custom modules allows any JavaScript logic to be inject for bespoke need they can be solution to your own bespoke filtering and sorting needs. You can find sample of custom modules the the Handlebars section of the sample templates e.g. to perform a sorted foreach.

The Legacy scripting model

Prior to 2.27.x a bespoke scripting language was used. A sample of this format is as follows

# Release notes
## Notes for release  New Empty Definition 25-Mar
**Release Number** : Release-5
**Release completed** : 2017-04-03T19:32:25.76Z
**Compared Release Number** : Release-4

### Associated work items
* ** Epic 21 ** Assigned by: Richard Fennell (Work MSA) <bm-richard.fennell@outlook.com>  Add items

### Associated commits
* **ID f5f964fe5ab27b1b312f6aa45ea1c5898d74358a ** Updated Readme.md #21

The use of a template allows the user to define the format, layout and fields shown in the release notes document. It is basically a file, in the output format required, with @@...@@ markers to denote the fields to be replaced when the tool generates the report file.

The @@..@@ markers are special loop control flags, they should be used in pairs before and after the block to be looped over

The @@..@@ marker options are as follow

• @@CSLOOP@@ should wrapper the block to be performed for all changesets/commits. This marker can accept a regex based filter to be applied to the commit message.
  • @@CSLOOP[^Merged PR #.+]@@ match only commits/changesets with a commit message in the form 'Merged PR #1234'
• @@WILOOP@@ should wrapper the block to be performed for all work items. This marker can accept a list of tags and field options that can be used as a filter on the work items. The general format is @@WILOOP[ALL|ANY]:TAG:Fieldname=value:...@@, there can be any number of parameters e.g.
  • @@WILOOP:TAG1:TAG2@@ matches work items that have all tags (legacy behaviour for backwards compatibility)
  • @@WILOOP[ALL]:TAG1:TAG2@@ matches work items that have all tags (equivalent to legacy behaviour)
  • @@WILOOP[ANY]:TAG1:TAG2@@ matches work items that have any of the tags
  • @@WILOOP[ALL]:TAG1:System.Title=Exact match to title@@ matches work items that have both the named tag and the field
  • @@WILOOP[ANY]:TAG1:System.Title=Exact match to title@@ matches work items that have either the named tag or the field
  • @@WILOOP[ANY]:TAG1:Custom.Field=*@@ matches any work items that has a field called Custom.Field irrespective of the value in the field (matches against the anyFieldContent value as a wildcard symbol)
• The ${properties} blocks inside the @@..@@ markers are the fields to be expanded from properties in the JSON response objects returned from the Azure DevOps REST API.

What is done behind the scenes is that each ${properties} block in the template is evaluated as a line of Node.JS in turn. The property objects available to get data from at runtime are:

Common objects

• widetail – the details of a given work item within the @@WILOOP@@@ block.
• csdetail – the details of a given Git commit or TFVC changeset inside the @@CSLOOP@@@ block

Release objects (only available in a release)

• releaseDetails – the release details of the release that the task was triggered for.
• compareReleaseDetails - the the previous successful release that comparisons are being made against

Build objects

• buildDetails – if running in a build, the build details of the build that the task is running in. If running in a release it is the build that triggered the release.

Pull request objects

• prDetails – populated with the build artifacts trigger info, if available (only shown if build triggered as part of PR validation).

Note: To dump all possible values use the form ${JSON.stringify(propertyToDump)}

Note: This task differed from the older PowerShell based Release Notes task that used the format $(properties), this task uses the format ${properties} due to the move from PowerShell to Node within the task

An example template to run within a Release for GIT or TFVC Azure DevOps build based artifacts could be

# Release notes
## Notes for release  ${releaseDetails.releaseDefinition.name}
**Release Number**  : ${releaseDetails.name}
**Release completed** : ${releaseDetails.modifiedOn}
**Compared Release Number**  : ${compareReleaseDetails.name}
**Build Trigger PR Number**: ${buildDetails.triggerInfo['pr.number']}
**PR Details Title **: ${prDetails.title}

### All associated work items
@@WILOOP@@
* ** ${widetail.fields['System.WorkItemType']} ${widetail.id} ** Assigned by: ${widetail.fields['System.AssignedTo']}  ${widetail.fields['System.Title']}
@@WILOOP@@

### Associated work items that have both the tags 'Tag 1' and 'Tag2', the legacy default format
@@WILOOP:Tag 1:Tag2@@
* ** ${widetail.fields['System.WorkItemType']} ${widetail.id} ** Assigned by: ${widetail.fields['System.AssignedTo']}  ${widetail.fields['System.Title']}
@@WILOOP:Tag 1:Tag2@@

### Associated work items that have both the tags 'Tag 1' and 'Tag2', the new loop format
@@WILOOP[ALL]:Tag 1:Tag2@@
* ** ${widetail.fields['System.WorkItemType']} ${widetail.id} ** Assigned by: ${widetail.fields['System.AssignedTo']}  ${widetail.fields['System.Title']}
@@WILOOP[ALL]:Tag 1:Tag2@@

### Associated work items that have any of the tags 'Tag 1' or 'Tag2', the new loop format
@@WILOOP[ANY]:Tag 1:Tag2@@
* ** ${widetail.fields['System.WorkItemType']} ${widetail.id} ** Assigned by: ${widetail.fields['System.AssignedTo']}  ${widetail.fields['System.Title']}
@@WILOOP[ANY]:Tag 1:Tag2@@

### Associated work items that have the title 'This is a title' or the tag 'Tag 1'
@@WILOOP[ALL]:System.Title=This is a title:TAG 1@@  
* **${widetail.fields['System.WorkItemType']} ${widetail.id}** ${widetail.fields['System.Title']}  
@@WILOOP:TAG 1@@  

### Associated commits
@@CSLOOP@@
* **ID ${csdetail.id} ** ${csdetail.message}
@@CSLOOP@@

### Associated commits with regex filter in form 'Merged PR #1234'
@@CSLOOP[^Merged PR #.+]@@
* **ID ${csdetail.id} ** ${csdetail.message}
@@CSLOOP[^Merged PR  #.+]@@

Usage

Once the extension is added to your Azure DevOps Server (TFS) or Azure DevOps Services, the task should be available in the utilities section of 'add tasks'

IMPORTANT - The V2 Tasks requires that oAuth access is enabled on agent running the task

The task takes the following parameters

• The output file name, for builds this will normally be set to $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)\releasenotes.md as the release notes will usually be part of your build artifacts. For release management usage the parameter should be set to something like $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)\releasenotes.md. Where you choose to send the created files is down to your deployment needs.
• A picker allows you to set if the template is provided as a file in source control or an inline file. The setting of this picker effects which other parameters are shown
  • Either, the template file name, which should point to a file in source control.
  • Or, the template text.
• (Advanced) Empty set text - the text to place in the results file if there is no changeset/commit or WI content
• (Advanced) Name of the release stage to look for the last successful release in, defaults to empty value so uses the current stage of the release that the task is running in.
• (Advanced V2 only) Delimiter for the tag separation in the WI Loop, defaults to colon ':'
• (Advanced V2 only) Equality symbol for the equivalents in field filters in the WI Loop, defaults to equals '='
• (Advanced V2 only) anyFieldContent symbol to represent any value when match field in the WI Loop, defaults to equals '*'
• (Advanced V2 only) Do not generate release notes of a re-deploy. If this is set, and a re-deploy occurs the task will succeeds with a warning
• (Advanced V2 only) Primary Only. If this is set only WI and CS associated with primary artifact are listed, default is false so all artifacts scanned.
• (Advanced V2 only) Replace File. If this is set the output overwrites and file already present.
• (Advanced V2 only) Append To File. If this is set, and replace file is false then then output is appended to the output file. If false it is preprended.
• (Advanced V2 only) Cross Project For PRs. If true will try to match commits to Azure DevOps PR cross project within the organisation, if false only searches the Team Project.
• (Advanced V2 only) GitHub PAT. (Optional) This GitHub PAT is only required to expand commit messages stored in a private GitHub repos. This PAT is not required for commit in Azure DevOps public or private repos or public GitHub repos
• (Advanced V2 only) Dump Payload to Console - If true the data objects passed to the file generator is dumped to the log.
• (Advanced V2 only) Dump Payload to File - If true the data objects passed to the file generator is dumped to a JSON file.
• (Advanced V2 only) Dump Payload Filename - The filename to dump the data objects passed to the file generator
• (Handlebars V2 only) customHandlebars ExtensionCode. A custom Handlebars extension written as a JavaScript module e.g. module.exports = {foo: function () {return 'Returns foo';}};
• (Handlebars V2 only) Get Parent and Children for associated work items, defaults to false
• (Outputs) Optional: Name of the variable that release notes contents will be copied into for use in other tasks. As an output variable equates to an environment variable, so there is a limit on the maximum size. For larger release notes it is best to save the file locally as opposed to using an output variable.

Output location

When using this task within a build then it is sensible to place the release notes files as a build artifacts.

However, within a release there are no such artifacts location. Hence, it is recommended that a task such as the WIKI Updater is used to upload the resultant file to a WIKI. Though there are other options such as store the file on a UNC share, in an Azure DevOps Artifact or sent as an email.

Local Testing of the Task & Templates

To speed the development of templates, with version 2.50.x, a tool is provided in this repo to allow local testing.

Also there are now parameters (see above) to dump all the REST API payload data to the console or a file to make discovery of the data available in a template easier.