How to configure Renovate to use angular style commit messages for breaking changes

[skycaptain]

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I have a project that uses semantic-releases and has a dependency mylibrary managed by Renovate. The project uses Angular-style commit messages, which are enforced using commitlint.

For mylibrary updates, I want Renovate to create different semantic commit types: a fix type for patch updates, a feat type for minor updates, and a breaking change commit for major updates. My config works like this:

{
  "$schema": "https://docs.renovatebot.com/renovate-schema.json",
  "extends": ["config:best-practices"],
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "description": "Trigger breaking release for major updates",
      "matchPackageNames": ["mylibrary"],
      "matchUpdateTypes": ["major"],
      "commitMessagePrefix": "feat(deps)!:"
    },
    {
      "description": "Trigger feature release for minor updates",
      "matchPackageNames": ["mylibrary"],
      "matchUpdateTypes": ["minor"],
      "semanticCommitType": "feat"
    },
    {
      "description": "Trigger fix release for patch updates",
      "matchPackageNames": ["mylibrary"],
      "matchUpdateTypes": ["patch"],
      "semanticCommitType": "fix"
    }
  ]
}

While this configuration mostly works, I've noticed an issue: for minor and patch updates, Renovate creates commit messages like feat(deps): update dependency ..., but for major updates it uses feat(deps)!: Update dependency, which fails commitlint validation (notice uppercase U). It appears that setting a commitMessagePrefix interferes with semantic commit detection. What would be the best solution here? Would enforcing semanticCommits in the package rule be sufficient? Is there a more elegant approach to implementing these package rules?

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[rarkins]

I'm not sure it's possible to get it working as-is, but if not then the best solution would probably be to support configuration like this: "semanticCommitType": "feat!"

[skycaptain]

Thanks for having a look. Right now, setting "semanticCommitType": "feat!" would render to feat!(deps): update ..., which has incorrect syntax (the ! must be placed immediately before the : according to the spec). We could however additionally set "semanticCommitScope": "" to generate a valid string feat!: update ... loosing the scope however.

Another solution could be defining "commitMessage": "{{{commitMessagePrefix}}} {{{lowercase commitMessageAction}}} {{{commitMessageTopic}}} {{{commitMessageExtra}}} {{{commitMessageSuffix}}}". This produces a valid commit message, though the behaviour differs slightly since commitMessageTopic and commitMessageExtra aren't lowercased. For example, it renders as feat(deps)!: update myimage Docker tag to v5 rather than feat(deps)!: update myimage docker tag to v5. Currently, the lowercase helper seems to only work with commitMessageAction in this scenario. When applied to commitMessageTopic or commitMessageExtra, it produces an empty string—possibly because these fields are templates themselves?

A third option would be to allow the commitMessageLowerCase option to be permanently enabled to enforce lowercase formatting.

[bodgit]

I just bumped into this issue; I want to be able to force a particular dependency to always generate a breaking change. I figured I'd give setting "semanticCommitType": "fix!" a go and be pleasantly surprised if it generated a valid semantic commit but was fully expecting the actual behaviour, so I wasn't disappointed when it didn't work.

Could we add support so adding the ! suffix DTRT? (Or having a "semanticCommitBreakingChange": true or similar config option? 🤷‍♂️

[rarkins]

Yes, a community PR would be welcome to add ! Support

[skycaptain]

Puzzled on why I hadn't realized this earlier, but leaving "semanticCommitType": "feat" and defining a commit body works—for example, "commitBody": "BREAKING CHANGE: major update of {{packageName}}". This keeps the commit message title lowercase and allows to trigger breaking changes with the commit. For others reading this, note that some presets also use commitBody (e.g., to sign the commit), so please consult the documentation first.