This is a simple, bash-only script and GitHub Action for Creating a new release on Github.

• Create a release in GitHub
• Create a tag to go with the release
• Specify the exact commit to release
• Specify the description (or body) of the release
• Append Github's Auto-generated release notes
• Set the release to latest, draft, or prerelease
• Optionally create/move a Major Tag and/or Minor Tag alongside the release

permissions:
  contents: write

steps:
  - name: Create Release
    uses: Chris-Greaves/release-github@v1
    with:
      tag: v1.2.3
      generate-notes: true
      draft: false

permissions: contents: write is required because repos default the Actions token to read-only — without it, the release creation call fails with a 403.

See action.yml for the full list of inputs and outputs.

A Release Tag is a git tag whose name is a Semantic Version (MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, per semver.org), with an optional leading lowercase v — this is the value passed to tag above. Setting tag-major/tag-minor also creates/force-moves a Moving Tag — a Major Tag (vMAJOR) and/or Minor Tag (vMAJOR.MINOR) — to the Release Tag's commit. Unlike the Release Tag, which is immutable once published, a Moving Tag always tracks the most recently released commit that shares its MAJOR (or MAJOR.MINOR) version — this is what consumers pin against (e.g. uses: Chris-Greaves/release-github@v1) to pick up non-breaking fixes and features automatically. Both inputs require tag to be a Release Tag, and are independent of each other:

permissions:
  contents: write

steps:
  - name: Create Release
    uses: Chris-Greaves/release-github@v1
    with:
      tag: v1.2.3
      tag-major: true
      tag-minor: true

This creates the Release Tag v1.2.3, then creates/moves the Major Tag v1 and Minor Tag v1.2 to point at the same commit.

ISC