release-it-action

Runs release-it as a GitHub Action, with handling for semantic releases and protected branches. 📤

Usage

This action works by running release-it for you. It works by:

1. Checking should-semantic-release for whether a new release is necessary, and bailing if not
2. Executing npx release-it --verbose

Run JoshuaKGoldberg/release-it-action in a GitHub workflow after building your code and setting your npm token:

concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}

jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
          ref: main
      - run: npm build
      - env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.ACCESS_TOKEN }}
          NPM_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.NPM_TOKEN }}
        uses: JoshuaKGoldberg/[email protected]

name: Release

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

permissions:
  contents: write
  id-token: write

Options

Key	Type	Default	Description
bypass-branch-protections	string	(none)	A branch to delete and recreate branch protections on.
git-user-email	string	${<git-user-name>}@users.noreply.github.com	git config user.email value for Git commits.
git-user-name	string	${github.context.actor}	git config user.name value for Git commits.
github-token	string	${GITHUB_TOKEN}	GitHub token (PAT) with repo and workflow permissions.
npm-token	string	${NPM_TOKEN}	npm access token with the automation role.
release-it-args	string	""	Any arbitrary arguments to pass to npx release-it --verbose.

Node API

release-it-action can be installed as a dependency that exports a releaseItAction function:

npm i release-it-action

import { releaseItAction } from "release-it-action";

await releaseItAction({
	branch: "main",
	githubToken: process.env.GITHUB_TOKEN,
	gitUserEmail: "[email protected]",
	gitUserName: "YourUsername",
	npmToken: process.env.NPM_TOKEN,
	owner: "YourUsername",
	releaseItArgs: "--preRelease=beta",
	repo: "your-repository",
});

Note that all non-boolean inputs are required and do not have default values in the Node API.

FAQs

Why does the checkout action run on the branch with full history?

release-it-action needs to run on the latest commit on the default/release branch and with a concurrency group. Otherwise, if multiple workflows are triggered quickly, later workflows might not include release commits from earlier workflows.

Why is there an option to bypass branch protections?

The bypass-branch-protections option is not recommended.

Some repositories have strict legacy branch protections which make it difficult to automate tasks that require pushing to the main branch. Bypassing those branch protections can make it easier to configure release-it to create Git commits.

It's recommended to instead use GitHub's newer and more granular repository rulesets.

Why does the option delete and recreate branch protections?

It would be great to instead either change which branch is protected or have a native GitHub API to disable a branch protection rule. Neither exist at time of writing. If you know that one now exists, please do file an issue!

See:

• #13 for supporting bypassing PR allowances
• #14 for supporting dismissal restrictions

Contributors

Josh Goldberg ✨ 💻 🖋 📖 🤔 🚇 🚧 📆 🔧 🐛 ⚠️

markehvn 🔧

michael faith 🐛

💙 This package is based on @JoshuaKGoldberg's create-typescript-app.