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Desktop GUI

keepachangelog-manager ships with an optional Tkinter desktop GUI for editing changelogs, backfilling history, publishing releases, and running batch component workflows.

Launch

changelogmanager gui

That's it — the same global options (--config, --component, -f/--error-format, --input-file) work, but the GUI lets you change them at any time from the Workspace panel at the top of the window.

You can also launch it as a module:

python -m changelogmanager gui

Layout

The current app is organized as a menubar plus four top-level screens:

Area Contents
Top — Workspace Changelog path, config path, component name, error format, and a global Dry run toggle
Edit Live [Unreleased] editor, add/remove/reorder controls, save, validate, release, and read-only released history
Initialize / Backfill create, config settings, backfill, and from-commits with source/schema/range controls and an output log
Releases github-release, github-pr, and gitlab-release, plus copyable sample CI snippets
Components / Batch Configured component listing plus validate --all, validate --all --changed-only, and from-commits --all

Scope

The GUI supports:

  • direct editing of [Unreleased] entries, including reordering
  • create, validate, and release
  • backfill and from-commits
  • github-release, github-pr, and gitlab-release
  • batch validate --all, validate --all --changed-only, and from-commits --all

Use the CLI directly for export commands (to-json, to-html), validate --fix, release --bump-versions, skill export, and JSON/quiet automation modes.

Destructive commands

Outside CI, the GUI defaults Dry run to on. Leave it on while you experiment, then untick it once you're satisfied with the previewed output.

github-release and github-pr require a repository (in owner/repo form) and a GitHub token. gitlab-release requires a project ID/path and a GitLab token. Token fields are masked and pre-populated from the corresponding environment variables when present.

When tkinter is missing

Some Python builds — notably minimal Linux containers and certain pyenv builds — ship without tkinter. In that case changelogmanager gui exits with code 1 and prints platform-specific install hints rather than a Python traceback. The CLI itself remains fully usable.

Typical fixes:

  • Debian / Ubuntu — sudo apt-get install python3-tk
  • Fedora / RHEL — sudo dnf install python3-tkinter
  • macOS (pyenv) — reinstall Python with Tk support, e.g. PYTHON_CONFIGURE_OPTS="--with-tcltk-includes='-I/opt/homebrew/opt/tcl-tk/include' --with-tcltk-libs='-L/opt/homebrew/opt/tcl-tk/lib -ltcl8.6 -ltk8.6'" pyenv install 3.12.x
  • Windows — use the python.org installer with the "tcl/tk and IDLE" option enabled