Github Release On Push Action

Stop using files for versioning. Use git tags instead!

Github Action to create a Github Release on pushes to master.

Features

• Flexible version bumping scheme with a project default or overrides using Pull Request Labels
• Creates Release Notes automatically (with a list of commits since the last release)

Rationale

CI & CD systems are simpler when they work with immutable monotonic identifers from the get-go. Trigger your release activites by subscribing to new tags pushed from this Action.

For automation, Github Releases (and by extension git tags) are better than versioned commit files for these reasons:

• Agnostic of language & ecosystem (i.e. does not rely on presence of package.json)
• Tagging does not require write permissions to bump version
• Tagging does not trigger infinite-loop webhooks from pushing version bump commits

Example Workflow

on: 
  push:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  release-on-push:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    steps:
      - uses: rymndhng/release-on-push-action@master
        with:
          bump_version_scheme: minor

Allowed values of bump_version_scheme:

• minor
• major
• patch
• norelease: Performs no release by default. Creation of release delegated to labels on Pull Requests.

For stability, we recommend pinning the version of the action. See Releases.

See action.yml for the full list of options.

FAQ

Can I skip creation of a release?

There are several approaches:

1. Put [norelease] in the commit title.
2. If the commit has an attached PR, add the label norelease to the PR.
3. Set the action's bump_version_scheme to norelease to disable this behavior by default

How do I change the bump version scheme using Pull Requests?

Iif the PR has the label release:major, release:minor, or release:patch, this will override bump_version_scheme.

This repository's pull requests are an example of this in action. For example, #19.

Only one of these labels should be present on a PR. If there are multiple, the behavior is undefined.

Do I need to setup Github Action access tokens or any other permission-related thing?

Github Actions will inject a token for this plugin to interact with the API.

You need to specify the following permission scopes for this action to work correctly:

permissions:
  contents: write
  pull-requests: read

Alternatively, you can enable read and write permission to this token under settings > actions > general > workflow permissions (disabled by default), but beware that this provides all of the actions in your repository with read and write access to all scopes.

Can I create a tag instead of a release?

Currently, no.

In order to reliably generate monotonic versions, we use Github Releases to track what the last release version is. See Release#get-the-latest-release.

How can I get the generated tag or version?

On a successful release, this action creates an output parameters tag_name, upload_url and version.

Example of how to consume this:

on: 
  push:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  release-on-push:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    steps:
      - id: release
        uses: rymndhng/release-on-push-action@master
        with:
          bump_version_scheme: minor
          tag_prefix: v
          
      - name: Check Output Parameters
        run: |
          echo "Got tag name ${{ steps.release.outputs.tag_name }}"
          echo "Got release version ${{ steps.release.outputs.version }}"
          echo "Upload release artifacts to ${{ steps.release.outputs.upload_url }}"

Can I customize the release body message?

Yes you can, with release_body. The contents of this be appended to the release description.

Example:

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  release-on-push:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    steps:
      - uses: rymndhng/release-on-push-action@master
        with:
          bump_version_scheme: minor
          release_body: "When set, adds extra text to body!"

Can I use Github's Generated Release Notes?

Yes you can, by setting use-github-release-notes to true. For more information, see Automatic Release Notes.

Note, if enabling this feature:

• If you have set release_body, the release_body will be prepended to the Generated Release Notes
• Enabling this will disable the commit summary generated by this project

Example:

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  release-on-push:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    steps:
      - uses: rymndhng/release-on-push-action@master
        with:
          bump_version_scheme: minor
          use_github_release_notes: true

Can I change the prefix v from the Git Tags?

Yes, you can customize this by changing the tag_prefix. Here's an example of removing the prefix by using an empty string.

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  release-on-push:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    steps:
      - uses: rymndhng/release-on-push-action@master
        with:
          tag_prefix: ""

Can I change the name of the Release?

Yes, you can customize this by changing the release_name. The release_name supports these template variables:

• <RELEASE_VERSION> contains the version number, i.e. 1.2.3
• <RELEASE_TAG> contains the git tag name, i.e. v1.2.3

See example below for how to create a release with the name Release 1.2.3

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  release-on-push:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    steps:
      - uses: rymndhng/release-on-push-action@master
        with:
          tag_prefix: "v"
          release_name: "Release <RELEASE_VERSION>"

How can I configure the maximum number of commits to summarize?

Use the option max_commits. The default value is 50.

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  release-on-push:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    steps:
      - uses: rymndhng/release-on-push-action@master
        with:
          max_commits: 100

Development

Uses babashka

To run tests:

1. Install babashka.
2. Install direnv
3. Create a .envrc file at the project root from this template:

export GITHUB_TOKEN=<YOUR_TOKEN>
export GITHUB_REPOSITORY=rymndhng/release-on-push-action
export GITHUB_SHA=167c690247d0933acde636d72352bcd67e33724b
export GITHUB_API_URL=https://api.github.com
export INPUT_BUMP_VERSION_SCHEME=minor
export INPUT_MAX_COMMITS=5
export INPUT_TAG_PREFIX=v
export INPUT_RELEASE_NAME="<RELEASE_TAG>"
export INPUT_DRY_RUN=1

2. Run Tests

make test
make dryrun

Big Thanks To

• shell-semver: https://github.com/fmahnke/shell-semver
• https://github.com/mikeal/publish-to-github-action/
• Inspiration: https://github.com/roomkey/lein-v