I'd like to propose adding a new property bodyLines to the commit object created by conventional-commits-parser. It would be a line-by-line representation of commit.body.

I'd be happy to try and contribute this if there is an interest in having it. I created a draft of this feature and it seemed relatively straightforward to implement.

Motivation

I was trying to customize the changelog generated in my project during a semantic-release run. I'm doing so by providing writerOpts.commitPartial for the conventionalcommits preset for @semantic-release/release-notes-generator (uses conventional-commits-parser and conventional-changelog-writer under the hood).

Specifically, I want to add the commit body to the end of the commit.hbs template by appending something like this:

{{#if body}}

  {{body}}
{{/if}}

This works; however, due to the nature of commit.body being a single string, I can't control the indentation if the body consists of multiple lines and so I'm getting a changelog entry like this:

    * feat: support all angle values as input

      Adds support for the angle value units deg, grad, rad, and turn when entering hues (see https://www.w3.org/TR/css-values-4/#angle-value).

Stops normalizing angle values to the range [0, 360) (e.g. a hue value of 450 will no longer be processed, stored, and emitted as 90).

With the addition I'm proposing, I would instead use the following:

{{#each bodyLines}}

  {{this}}
{{/each}}

and get the following entry (note the difference in indentation of the last line):

    * feat: support all angle values as input

      Adds support for the angle value units deg, grad, rad, and turn when entering hues (see https://www.w3.org/TR/css-values-4/#angle-value).

      Stops normalizing angle values to the range [0, 360) (e.g. a hue value of 450 will no longer be processed, stored, and emitted as 90).

Notes

My current semantic-release configuration for reference:

import { readFileSync } from 'node:fs'

const defaultCommitPartial = readFileSync('./node_modules/conventional-changelog-writer/templates/commit.hbs', { encoding: 'utf-8' })
const customCommitPartial = readFileSync('./changelog-template-commit.hbs', { encoding: 'utf-8' })
const commitPartial = defaultCommitPartial + customCommitPartial

export default {
	branches: [
		'main',
	],
	plugins: [
		'@semantic-release/commit-analyzer',
		['@semantic-release/release-notes-generator', {
			preset: 'conventionalcommits',
			writerOpts: {
				commitPartial,
			},
		}],
		'@semantic-release/changelog',
	],
}

{{#if body}}

  {{body}}

{{/if}}