Tracking Innovation: How Astronomer Streamlined Release Notes with Towncrier

Astronomer faced challenges in managing release notes for its Astro product due to a distributed team and a fast-paced, weekly release cycle that involved numerous changes. Initially, the process involved technical writers manually sifting through pull requests, which was time-consuming and error-prone. Attempts to streamline the process through product managers were insufficient, as they lacked insight into smaller but impactful code changes. The solution came with the introduction of Towncrier, a tool that automates changelog generation from "news fragments" added by engineers to their pull requests. By repurposing Towncrier's capabilities, Astronomer created an internal changelog that technical writers could use to draft release notes efficiently. To integrate this process smoothly into the engineering workflow, they adjusted the process to be initially optional and later mandatory, utilizing GitHub actions to extract change descriptions. This approach reduced the time needed for writing release notes from hours to minutes while fostering a stronger collaboration between engineers and technical writers and allowing for continuous iteration without burdening developers.

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