Markdown friendly block step text input for entering release notes

We have a block step with a text input that requires the developer to enter release notes, which is followed by an API call to github to create a release. The text box is small and not markdown friendly, so it’s difficult to type in the release notes. Github’s UI is much more friendly for entering release notes, but switching back and forth between github and buildkite is not ideal.

Hi @molcikas-widen, could you expand on what you mean by “markdown friendly?” Are you after a larger text box, a formatting toolbar, or something else?

@jess We were hoping for a larger text box and a preview pane so you can verify it looks correct.

We tend to think of the fields as being pretty generic, and usually used for short bits of input, so specific handling of particular syntaxes isn’t something that feels likely.

I’ll look into allowing for setting the size of the input field, though; it should auto-size to fit whatever you put in it, but perhaps requesting a larger input from the outset is reasonable!

One option you might consider is writing your release notes on GitHub and using something like the GitHub Action Trigger for Buildkite to send that to Buildkite. That way you get the GitHub-native markdown previewing.

The other thing you could consider is setting up a pipeline which leverages the Annotation feature for the preview, though obviously that isn’t real-time.

Hope that helps!

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