How to generate CHANGELOG.md in IntelliJ IDEA

By Alexander Cherepanov | | 2 minutes
IntelliJ Apache Velocity

There is a good practice to maintain a changelog file for a project. One of the most used templates for CHANGELOG.md is described on keepachangelog.com.

If you’re using IntelliJ IDEA or other JetBrains IDE, you can generate a new CHANGELOG.md using File and Code Templates feature.

file-template.png

It’s using Apache Velocity templating language. And if you are pasting changelog’s markdown template as is, generated file will be like this:

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# Changelog
All notable changes to this pipeline template will be documented in this file.

The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/),
and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html).

- initial version

Apache Velocity ignores 2nd and 3rd level headers. The problem is that strings starting with double hash (##) are used as comments by Velocity templating.

Escaping attempt

Trying to use escaping VTL references with \ character actually does not help. For example, escaping like this:

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\## [0.1.0] - ${YEAR}-${MONTH}-${DAY}
\### Added
- initial version

will generate the following content for the file:

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\\- initial version

Solution

For generating correct markdown, you can assign hash sign (#) to a variable and then use it in the Velocity template.

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#set($hash = '#')## Assign a hash (#) character to a variable
# Changelog
All notable changes to this pipeline template will be documented in this file.

The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/),
and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html).

${hash}${hash} [0.1.0] - ${YEAR}-${MONTH}-${DAY}
${hash}${hash}${hash} Added
- initial version