Make Release Pnpm Changesets

7 min read Oct 13, 2024

Managing Your Project Releases with pnpm and Changesets: A Step-by-Step Guide

Are you tired of manually managing your project releases, struggling to keep track of changes, and dealing with inconsistent versioning? Look no further than pnpm and changesets - a powerful combination that streamlines your release workflow. This article will guide you through the process of setting up and using pnpm and changesets, empowering you to release your project efficiently and confidently.

What are pnpm and Changesets?

pnpm is a fast, efficient, and disk space-saving package manager for JavaScript projects. It offers a range of advantages over other package managers, including:

Speed and efficiency: pnpm's innovative approach to dependency management significantly reduces download and installation times.
Disk space optimization: pnpm utilizes a hard-link based approach to minimize the amount of disk space required for your project's dependencies.
Faster updates: pnpm ensures swift updates by leveraging shared dependencies across multiple projects.

Changesets is a powerful tool that simplifies the release process by automating versioning and change management. It helps you:

Track changes: Changesets automatically detect changes made to your project and create a record of what has been updated.
Generate release notes: It uses the changeset information to generate informative release notes, making it easy to communicate the latest updates to your users.
Version packages: Changesets intelligently determines the appropriate version bumps for your packages based on the changes made.

Setting up pnpm and Changesets

Initialize your project: If you haven't already, create a new project directory and initialize it with npm or yarn.
Install pnpm globally: Use your preferred package manager to install pnpm globally on your system.
Install pnpm and changesets: Add pnpm and changesets as dev dependencies to your project:

pnpm add -D pnpm changesets

Create a changesets configuration: In the root of your project, create a .changesetrc file. This file allows you to customize changesets behavior, including:

{
  "release": {
    "strategy": "independent"
  }
}

The "independent" strategy means each package will be versioned independently, which is often a preferred approach.

Working with Changesets

Create a changeset: Whenever you make a change that you want to include in a release, use the pnpm changeset command to create a changeset file. This file will contain information about the changes you made and the packages affected.

pnpm changeset add "feat: Add new feature"

Edit the changeset: After creating the changeset, you can open the generated changeset file in your editor to provide more details about the changes. Include a clear description of the changes, any relevant links to pull requests, and any breaking changes.
Commit and push: Once you're satisfied with the changeset, commit your changes and push them to your repository.
Release your packages: Use the pnpm changeset version command to generate a release for your packages. Changesets will automatically determine the correct version bumps based on the changeset files.

pnpm changeset version

Publish: After the release is generated, use pnpm publish to publish the updated packages to your registry.

Example Workflow

Let's say you've made some changes to your project, including:

Adding a new feature to a package called my-package.
Fixing a bug in another package called my-utility.

You can create changesets for these changes as follows:

pnpm changeset add "feat: Add new feature to my-package" --packages my-package
pnpm changeset add "fix: Fix bug in my-utility" --packages my-utility

Then, you can review and edit the generated changeset files. Finally, use pnpm changeset version and pnpm publish to release your packages.

Best Practices

Use clear and concise descriptions: Provide detailed information in your changeset files, making it easy for others to understand the changes made.
Group related changes: Keep changesets organized by grouping related changes together.
Use meaningful release notes: The release notes generated by changesets should be clear and informative, providing context for your users.
Test thoroughly: Make sure to test your changes before releasing them to ensure stability.

Conclusion

pnpm and changesets offer a powerful and efficient way to manage your project releases, simplifying the process and reducing the chance of errors. By automating versioning, change management, and release notes, they free you up to focus on building great software. By adopting these tools, you'll streamline your release process, increase productivity, and ensure consistent and reliable releases for your users.