How to allow breaking changes (based on commit messages)?

[JanWennrichPCSG]

Hello,

I just gave the tool a test and really like it! We're now planning to add it to our (GitLab) CI pipelines.

We're using semantic versioning and the conventional commits specification for our commit messages in combination with semantic release.
This automatically determines the next version number based on the commit messages.

So the commit message fix: very important fix would create a new patch version.
Whereas when commiting refactor!: remove deprecated classes (notice the !) would create a new major version.

Therefore breaking changes are allowed in commits that contain an !.

When running the backward compatibility check on such a breaking change commit, the tool complains about the breaking change. But as the commit is marked with the !, a major version would be released and the breaking change should be allowed. So the tool would break our CI.

Is there a way to tell the tool to ignore certain commits or commit messages?
Or am I approaching this problem incorrectly?

Thank you in advance and keep up the great work!

[Ocramius]

If you have your own idea of "previous" version, use --from= with your own SHA1 of choice there.

As for "excluding" stuff: you would make a change, get CI to red, do a release, and then you'd be back to green.