Nx release independent project changelogs should roll changelog changes up to dependent projects

[njsokol]

Some info:

• using pnpm
• building a design system
• Nx 20.0.3
• using version-plans

I have a scenario where we have a suite package that has other package included as dependencies (design system):

// File structure
packages/
    suite/
    package-a/
    package-b/


// package/suite/package.json
{
    "name": "suite",
    ...
    "dependencies": {
        "package-a": "workspace:*",
        "package-b": workspace:*",
    }
}

Through the normal release process everything is working and I am getting the Updated dependencies in my output

// suite/CHANGELOG.md
## 0.6.1 (2025-03-01)

### 🧱 Updated Dependencies

- Updated package-a to 0.3.1
- Updated package-b to 0.1.0

My trouble is that I'd love to be able to see what package-a and package-b changes were in the suite/CHANGELOG.md as a sort of rollup of all the changes. Is this possible with independent packages and version plans? I couldn't find the documentation on how to achieve this.

So my expected changelog would be more like:

// suite/CHANGELOG.md
## 0.6.1 (2025-03-01)

### 🚀 Features

- package-b: added a new feature 

### 🩹 Fixes

- package-a: fixed a bug

### 🧱 Updated Dependencies

- Updated package-a to 0.3.1
- Updated package-b to 0.1.0

[Hotell]

NOTE: Fluent core will need this as well to mirror what we have with beachball

• https://github.com/microsoft/beachball/blob/master/src/types/ChangelogOptions.ts#L13C12-L13C33

// example of our current beachball config to achieve this functionality

{ 
changelog: {
 groups: [
   scope: [...vNextPaths],
   groupConfig: {
        masterPackageName: '@fluentui/react-components',
        changelogPath: 'packages/react-components/react-components',
        include: vNextPaths,
   }
  ]
 }
}

---

hmm, this seems like an non generic approach to be added to the releases functionality, but adding a plug-able api to the changelog renderer could solve this in a nice way I guess?

wondering about feasibility to have "workspace renderer enablement per project and its dependants" ( which is basically what @njsokol is after if I understood this correctly) ?

other options:

• completely re-implement renderer in user land https://github.com/nrwl/nx/blob/master/packages/nx/release/changelog-renderer/index.ts.

• tweak manually the content which can be fetched from programmatical api , something like:

  const result = await releaseChangelog({});
  const suiteChangeLog = result.projectChangelogs['suite-package'].contents;
  // fetch all suite deps changelogs 
  // update suiteChangelog
  // write and commit

thoughts @JamesHenry ?

[JamesHenry]

@njsokol You should be able to create a custom changelog renderer but not have to reimplement the whole thing. It's intentionally written as a class so that you can extend from it and patch individual pieces.

E.g. You could patch just the renderDependencyBumps method and inline changes there in that section or you could go one step further and patch preprocessChanges I think, to include more of the dependency changes within the current changelog.

It's not something I've tried personally, but I think that would have enough info without requiring a massive custom implementation.

Maybe give that a try and report back and let me know if there are any blockers?

You can see an example of an OSS project leveraging a custom changelog renderer here for a different reason: https://github.com/typescript-eslint/typescript-eslint/blob/7f2a5bdd3c2d5aed79851242acebe6ecad1cf21f/nx.json#L29