justincy / github-action-npm-release

Automatically generate a release when the package.json version changes

Automatic GitHub Release

Automatically generate a release when the package.json version changes. The release name and tag will match the new version. If no releases yet exist, this action will create the first release.

The release notes will contain a change log generated from git history in the following format:

- f0d91bd Making progress
- 275e3e2 Initial commit

Assumptions

This action makes a few assumptions:

• actions/checkout@v2 with fetch-depth: 0 is used before this action runs. That allows this action to have all the information it needs to generate the change log from the git history.
• You are only releasing from one branch
• It is only used during push

Usage Example

name: Release
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  build:
    name: Release
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      - name: Release
        uses: justincy/[email protected]
        id: release
      - name: Print release output
        if: ${{ steps.release.outputs.released == 'true' }}
        run: echo Release ID ${{ steps.release.outputs.release_id }}

Works great in tandem with auto-publishing. Here's an example for the GitHub Package Registry:

name: Release
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  release:
    name: Release
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      - name: Automatic GitHub Release
        uses: justincy/[email protected]
        id: release
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v1
        if: steps.release.outputs.released == 'true'
        with:
          registry-url: 'https://npm.pkg.github.com'
      - name: Publish
        if: steps.release.outputs.released == 'true'
        run: npm publish
        env:
          NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Inputs

• token: Personal access token for GitHub authentication. Optional. Defaults to ${{ github.token }}.
• path: Path of the package.json file that will be examined. Optional. Defaults to ${{ github.workspace }}.

Outputs

• released: Set to true when a release is created.
• html_url: The URL for viewing the release in a browser.
• upload_url: The URL for uploading assets to the release.
• release_id: ID of the release.
• release_tag: Tag of the release.
• release_name: Name of the release.

Why re-invent the wheel?

• Publish to npm
• Release Me Action
  • I don't want to be forced to use any specific commit format. I want a new version to be the only signal to release.
• Version Check
  • It only checks commits in a single push. If the workflow run associated with the push that has the new version fails and you push again to fix it, then the second workflow run isn't associated with the commits where the version changed and therefore it doesn't detect that the version changed.
• I wanted to learn more about GitHub actions.

Possible future enhancements

• Add options for draft and pre-release
• Add option for custom git-log format

github-action-npm-release's Issues

Release missing subsequent commits

This action works really well for what I want, with the slight negative side-effect that Releases lose the # commits to x since this release.

I believe this is because target_commitish is not set to the branch, but rightly the commit hash.
I'm unsure if this property is able to accept a combination of branch and commit hash to allow github to maintain a link between the release and target branch.

Do you know if target_commitish is able to accept a value like master#a1b2c3?

invalid doc

https://github.com/glensc/node-cached_property/runs/5083199199?check_suite_focus=true

Error: Unable to resolve action justincy/[email protected], unable to find version v1.2.0

Unable to generate the change log

Hello,

I've run into this issue today:

The action code is simply

- name: Automatic GitHub Release
  uses: justincy/[email protected]
  id: release

But when I try to run the same command in my terminal, it seems to be working fine

$ git log 8017db07255d151fed69abce14cad59ce1276c41..HEAD --pretty=format:"- %h %s"

- d4ece6c Updated workflow version
- b1b789c Updated action code
...

Sometimes the release target_commitish is a branch, not a sha

We're expecting the target_commitish of the release to always be a commit sha but sometimes it's a branch name. The leads to an empty change log because there are no commits in the range master..HEAD.

How can we get a commit sha for a release?

https://stackoverflow.com/a/56753582

Fetch the tag details.