wowup Generate Patch Notes
WowUp's in-app "What's New" dialog is driven by the CHANGELOGS array at the top of
wowup-electron/src/app/services/wowup/patch-notes.service.ts.
Each entry is { Version: string, html: string }, newest first. Do not touch
wowup-electron/src/assets/changelog.json — that's a legacy file for pre-2.1.0 releases and is no longer
extended.
Step 1 — Determine the target version
Read version from wowup-electron/package.json. Strip any pre-release/build suffix
(-beta.1, -alpha.2, etc.) — every existing CHANGELOGS entry uses a bare X.Y.Z, never a
pre-release tag.
Step 2 — Check if it already exists
Search the CHANGELOGS array for an entry whose Version matches. If found, stop — tell the
user the entry already exists (quote it) and do not modify the file.
Step 3 — Find the source material
The current top entry of CHANGELOGS is the previous released version. Find its git tag with
git tag --list "v<prevVersion>*" --sort=-v:refname (tags follow v2.22.1, or
v2.22.1-beta.N if no stable tag was ever cut). Use the most relevant tag as the base and diff
to HEAD:
git log --oneline <baseTag>..HEAD -- wowup-electron/src wowup-electron/app
If no matching tag exists at all, ask the user for the right base ref instead of guessing.
If that tag does exist but the range is empty (HEAD is the tagged commit, i.e. everything
interesting is still uncommitted — this happens mid-release), fall back to
git diff <baseTag> -- wowup-electron/src wowup-electron/app and git status instead of
stopping. Don't ask the user to commit first; just work from the working tree.
Step 4 — Draft the entry
Read the actual commits/diffs (not just messages) for anything non-obvious. Group into whichever of these sections apply — skip empty ones, keep existing entries' ordering:
Features(new user-facing capability)Changes(behavior/UX tweaks, non-breaking)Fixes(bug fixes)
Write each bullet as a short, user-facing sentence (not a commit message) — no ticket numbers,
no internal file paths, no "refactor"/"chore" noise. Skip commits/diff hunks that are purely
internal (lint, tests, CI, dependency bumps, config/build tooling, the ongoing UI-decoupling
migration) unless they fix a user-visible bug. Match the plain style of the two most recent
entries (2.22.1, 2.22.0) — no inline style= attributes, just:
<h4>Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>...</li>
</ul>
<h4>Fixes</h4>
<ul>
<li>...</li>
</ul>
If nothing user-facing survives that filter (everything found is internal refactor, tooling,
or config), don't stop and ask what to write. Fall back to a minimal default entry instead —
this mirrors how past releases with a quiet cycle were actually written (see 2.22.1's own
"Various bug fixes"):
<h4>Fixes</h4>
<ul>
<li>Various bug fixes and improvements</li>
</ul>
Flag clearly in the hand-off (Step 6) that the default was used and why, so it's obvious this is a placeholder rather than a researched entry.
Step 5 — Insert
Add the new { Version, html } object as the first element of the CHANGELOGS array
(right after const CHANGELOGS: ChangeLog[] = [), preserving the descending-version order of
every entry after it.
Step 6 — Hand off
Show the user the diff. This is a first draft of customer-facing release copy — tell them to proofread wording/ordering before it ships, don't present it as final.