Gradle Generate Release Notes from Git

I thought my ‘Gradle Generate Release Notes’ script might be useful for others, so here you go:

If you are using the built in Gradle tool for Android Studio and you want to automagically generate release notes (or a list of commit messages) from Git then this little script might help (whilst it is pretty specific for Android Studio, it could easily be modified for any Gradle

I got the inspiration from this post over at coders kitchen – but it seemed a little to complex for my needs, so I cut it right back to just text based, and just dates and commit messages between the tags. More than sufficient for my needs.

Gradle Generate Release Notes Script

println "Generating release notes (releaseNotes.txt)"
def releaseNotes = new File('app\\build\\outputs\\apk\\releaseNotes.txt')
releaseNotes.delete()
def lastTag = ""
def tags = []
def procTags = "git tag -l".execute()
procTags.in.eachLine { line -> tags += line }
tags += "head"

tags.each { tag ->
    releaseNotes << "[[ Changes from $lastTag to $tag ]]\n"
    def cmdLine = "git log $lastTag..$tag --pretty=format:\"%cd - %s\" --date=short"
    //releaseNotes << "$cmdLine\n\n"
    def procCommit = cmdLine.execute()
    procCommit.in.eachLine { line -> releaseNotes << line + "\n" }
    releaseNotes << "\n\n\n"
    lastTag = tag
}

It will create a file named ‘releasenotes.txt’ in the build folder that has a list of the changes between each git ‘tag’.
So, if you  add a git ‘tag’ for each release you do, you should be able to see the commit messages from the last release to the current one.

Sample Output

Here’s a sample of the output from the Gradle Generate Release Notes from Git script.

[[ Changes from v1.1.1 to v1.1.2 ]]
2016-03-10 - Changes to release note generator
2016-03-10 - Better format for release notes

[[ Changes from v1.1.2 to head ]]
2016-03-10 - More changes to release note generator

I might look at changing the output to Markdown – should be pretty simple…