Add an option to disable changelog generation

[kettanaito]

Thanks for stopping by to let us know something could be better!

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Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I'm frustrated that Release Please always generates and commits a CHANGELOG.md file. It is the developer's decision to keep that file or not, and it must not be enforced by this tool. For instance, I find changelog files to be redundant and provide little use to the end consumers of my software. I use GitHub releases as the changelog, which Release Please already fills in using the same content as the changelog.

Describe the solution you'd like

A --disable-changelog boolean flag which, when set to true, skips the changelog generation phase altogether.

Describe alternatives you've considered

1. Setting changelog-types: "", gets ignored by the tool.
2. Setting changelog-path to the path ignored in Git. No effect either.

[unjust]

I'm using release-please with a monorepo and I prefer one changelog for the entire project, and not for the subprojects.
I've tried "changelog-path": "", "changelog-path": false, in the config.json in order to skip it in subprojects, but its still generated.
also adding CHANGELOG.md to my .gitignore doesnt stop the pull request from adding them, maybe oktokit bypasses the gitignore? 🤷

[chingor13]

An option to disable changelog generation is feasible, but not something we're planning on implementing. We would welcome a pull request to potentially add the feature.

[kettanaito]

@chingor13, I'd love to help you ship it. Just, let me know what kind of API you find best to disable changelog generation. I proposed --disable-changelog above, do you have any opinions on that? We can also use --no-changelog, following the --no flags convention for negative expected behaviors.

If we can agree on the API here, I will try to pen a pull request this/next week. Thanks!

[chingor13]

Thanks!

I think we want this as a manifest config option (schema: https://github.com/googleapis/release-please/blob/main/schemas/config.json). The CLI option is an optional inline interface into specifying a manifest config (but we prefer folks configure a manifest config).

As for the naming of the option, I would suggest skip-changelog to match skip-release and skip-snapshot configuration options.

[unjust]

+1 on the manifest option. It would be nice to be able to skip-change logs on packages in a repo but still keep the overall changelog. I think the manifest would allow this granularity.

[unjust]

@kettanaito do you have a branch for this work yet ? 👀 need a hand ?

[aabouzaid]

@unjust I see that you already have some WIP ... did you open a PR for it? (or willing to continue working on it?)