chore(release): provide a way to create a local release with less grunt work (#429)

* docs(contributing): add information to update the changelog

* docs(changelog): add a first draft

it needs to contain the new PRs and only contains a not very nice version of the previous release to have an example

* chore(release): propose a way to locally generate a release

.versionrc.json

@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+{
+  "header": "### Actions Stale Changelog\n"
+}

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-### Building and testing
+# Building and testing
 
 Install the dependencies.
 
@@ -36,10 +36,32 @@ Run the linter and fix (almost) every issue for you :heavy_check_mark:
 $ npm lint:all:fix
 ```
 
-### Before creating a PR
+# Before creating a PR
+
+## Build and quality checks
 
 Build, lint, package and test everything.
 
 ```bash
 $ npm all
 ```
+
+# Release
+
+Based on [standard-version](https://github.com/conventional-changelog/standard-version).
+
+## Define the new version
+
+You can run `npm run release:dry-run` to create a dry-run, or you can directly run `npm run release` to create a new local release.  
+It will run `prerelease` beforehand to build and pack everything.
+
+If the `prerelease` succeeded, a bump of version will happen based on the unreleased commits.  
+It will:
+
+- Update the _package.json_ version field
+- Update the _package-lock.json_ version field
+- Update the _CHANGELOG.md_ to include the release notes of the new version
+- Create a local tag
+- Create a commit
+
+If everything generated seems ok for you, you can push your tag by running `git push --follow-tags origin {your-branch-name}`.

package.json

@@ -16,7 +16,10 @@
     "test": "jest",
     "test:only-errors": "jest --reporters jest-silent-reporter --silent",
     "test:watch": "jest --watch --notify --expand",
-    "all": "npm run build && npm run format && npm run lint && npm run pack && npm test"
+    "all": "npm run build && npm run format && npm run lint && npm run pack && npm test",
+    "prerelease": "npm run build && npm run pack",
+    "release": "standard-version",
+    "release:dry-run": "standard-version --dry-run"
   },
   "repository": {
     "type": "git",
@@ -52,6 +55,7 @@
     "jest-silent-reporter": "^0.4.0",
     "js-yaml": "^4.0.0",
     "prettier": "^2.2.1",
+    "standard-version": "^9.2.0",
     "terminal-link": "^2.1.1",
     "ts-jest": "^26.5.3",
     "typescript": "^4.2.4"