Standard-version is a tool that automates versioning and changelog generation based on conventional commits. It is a replacement for npm version with some additional features, such as customizing the header of your changelog, skipping any of the steps (tag, commit, changelog), and dry-run mode.

How to use standard-version on a GitHub project

To use standard-version on a GitHub project, follow these steps:

• Install standard-version as a dev dependency: npm i --save-dev standard-version
• Add a script to your package.json: "release": "standard-version"
• Make sure your commit messages follow the conventional commit format: type(scope): subject
• When you are ready to release a new version, run npm run release
• This will automatically bump the version in your package.json, update the changelog file, create a new commit and tag it with the version number.
• Push your changes and tags to GitHub: git push --follow-tags origin main

Conventional commit format

The conventional commit format is a simple way to structure your commit messages so that they can be parsed by tools like standard-version. The format consists of three parts:

• type: The kind of change that the commit introduces. It can be one of the following:
  • feat: A new feature
  • fix: A bug fix
  • docs: Documentation only changes
  • style: Changes that do not affect the meaning of the code (white-space, formatting, missing semi-colons,etc)
  • refactor: A code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature
  • perf: A code change that improves performance
  • test: Adding missing tests or correcting existing tests
  • chore: Other changes that don’t modify src or test files
• scope (optional): The scope of the change. It can be any word that describes the affected part of the code. subject: A short description of the change.

Some examples of conventional commits are:

feat(cart):
add checkout button

fix(order):
handle invalid input

docs(readme):
update installation instructions