The auto-generated release notes do not include commits

[iilyak]

While implementing automatic release publishing workflow I planned to use gh tool to generate release. However I've noticed that the release notes generated in the release do not include any commits. The only content of the notes is

<!-- Release notes generated using configuration in .github/release.yml at 2.23.0 -->

**Full Changelog**: https://github.com/iilyak/clouseau/compare/2.21.0...2.23.0

I've opened a ticket for gh tool cli/cli#6159.

Further investigation revealed that it seems to be a problem with github itself.

When I attempt to create release via github UI I see a hint "There were no pull requests associated with the commits included in the release. Automatically-generated release notes were not generated". However there are merge commits in the repository.

The commits in the repository https://github.com/iilyak/clouseau/commits/master

[nevernotmove]

Same problem and error message for me. I assumed the release notes would be generated and contain issues / commits. Did anyone find a way around it?

[codersasha]

I haven't found a way around it, but in case this helps -- this seems to occur for me when the commits are not on the "main" branch.

In our org, we create cherry-pick tag chains for patch releases (i.e. we cut v1.2.3 off v1.2.2, with cherry-picks from the main branch added onto it). When we try generate release notes for v1.2.2...v1.2.3, they are empty, even though the "Compare" link clearly shows the commits as in your screenshot.

[TDcaiqiang]

There is a similar case when releasing a hotfix version which is based on the previous release tag instead of the main branch, hotfix branch is not based on the main and should be based on the release version running online, because there may be commits that have been merged into the main after the latest release, but the hotfix does not want to include them and if based on main to release hotfix all of them need revert, it's not elegant.

[TDcaiqiang]

I suppose the reason is the hotfix tag which is created based on the previous release tag is not included in the main, so maybe merging the tag from the hotfix into the main could be a workaround, but it seems strange.

[MartinX3]

The sad problem is that they only respect changes from pull requests.
If you commit directly to your master branch it will be ignored.

See https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/14517

[Ark2000]

lol

[sovetski]

very anoying, on the side projects where we are single developer who works on it, we generally work on the main branch, we can not spend time to create a pull request for each change to validate it by our self just after...

[Youssef11296]

any solution here?

[tomkeuper]

Is this something we can get fixed? I'm also running into the same problem. Im trying to create release notes on a production branch.
Maybe by adding an option to select what branch it looks at instead of just master?
I assume it looks at the default branch atleast

[GunnarMorrigan]

Obviously we would also like to see this changed...

Any updates from GitHub?

[ac185423]

My team is also experiencing this same issue. Release notes are not auto-generating when we make Github releases off of our main branch. There are new PR merge commits that should be included in the auto-generated release notes.

[ac185423]

Any update on this?

[ac185423]

Bumping the thread to keep it relevant. This is still an issue for my team. It really puts a kink in our release flow.

[fynnfluegge]

Issue is also relevant here.

I am fine that commits are not included but rather only references of merged PRs in release notes in general.

But if I want to cherrypick merged PRs from main into a hotfix branch and create a release from that hotfix branch, even the cherrypicks of the merged PRs are not included in the autogenerated release notes. It would be really helpful if at least cherrypicks from merged PRs are recognised by the release notes generator. Currently this needs to be added manually.

[sovetski]

Any news please? On side projects we generally work on "main" branch without PR, which is logic, so it should include commits from main branch too...

[deadletterq]

Still relevant issue.

[vyamak]

Seems to me that only "Verified" commits are exported to release notes. Others are ignored. Why? I’m not sure. And so far, no way to change this rule, from my understanding.

[lexfernandez]

I just notice this is what is actually happening to me, those commits that are unverified are being ignored

[miteshpc]

Creating a PR is the best practice but tideous and cumbersome. Would be possible for auto generated release notes to go down to the commits rather than the PR only, but then it would also generate lots of noise.

Maybe use of ChatGPT to convert the full changelog into release notes is more appropriate in this point of time.