In October 2021, GitHub introduced a feature that allows maintainers to generate release notes for a release automatically. Like ergebnis/github-changelog, GitHub creates the release notes based on pull requests merged into the default branch since the previous release.

When you use the UI of GitHub to create a release, you can quickly generate these release notes with the click of a button.

Even better, GitHub can automatically generate a changelog for you when you create a release via their API!

In combination with actions/github-script you can easily create a GitHub Actions workflow that automatically creates a release with changelog when you push a tag.

Here is an example of the release workflow I maintain in ergebnis/php-package-template, and eventually propagate to and use in all of my open-source repositories in the @ergebnis organization:

# https://docs.github.com/en/actions

name: "Release"

on: # yamllint disable-line rule:truthy
  push:
    tags:
      - "**"

jobs:
  release:
    name: "Release"

    runs-on: "ubuntu-latest"

    steps:
      - name: "Determine tag"
        run: "echo \"RELEASE_TAG=${GITHUB_REF#refs/tags/}\" >> $GITHUB_ENV"

      - name: "Create release"
        uses: "actions/github-script@v5"
        with:
          github-token: "${{ secrets.ERGEBNIS_BOT_TOKEN }}"
          script: |
            try {
              await github.rest.repos.createRelease({
                draft: false,
                generate_release_notes: true,
                name: process.env.RELEASE_TAG,
                owner: context.repo.owner,
                prerelease: false,
                repo: context.repo.repo,
                tag_name: process.env.RELEASE_TAG,
              });
            } catch (error) {
              core.setFailed(error.message);
            }

You can see an example of a release with release notes created by this workflow in ergebnis/data-provider:1.1.0.

Feel free to copy, and enjoy!