Just use the gh release create command, for example:

       - name: Create release
         env:
           GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
         run: gh release create "$GITHUB_REF_NAME" # GITHUB_REF_NAME is the tag name in `on.push.tags` workflows

You can also attach files to the releases, for example see this PR.

Creates reasonable enough GitHub releases for pushed tags, with the commit log as release body.

The action also has customizable release body, that support markdown, and template fields. See template option to see how that works.

By no means is this an action with extensive configurable options except for the ones already provided. But I would love to add some more in the future.

jobs:
  Release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      with:
        fetch-depth: 50
    - uses: fregante/release-with-changelog@v3
      with:
        token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Or you can customize it further:

    - uses: fregante/release-with-changelog@v3
      with:
        token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        exclude: '^Meta'
        commit-template: '- {title} ← {hash}'
        template: |
          ### Changelog

          {commits}

          {range}

          ❤

The action expects you to do a deep clone of the repository using actions/checkout@v2 in order to get historical commits. You can use fetch-depth: 0 for actions/checkout action to clone entire repository or have a reasonable number like 100 to fetch the last 100 commits.

Required: Personal access token used to create releases.

Default: {tag}

Title for the release being create. Available replacements:

• {tag} The tag for which the changelog is being generated.

Default:

{commits}

{range}

Markdown template to be included in release notes. Available replacements:

• {commits} List of commits for this release, see commit-template below for format of each entry.
• {range} A link to diff on GitHub between the last and current release.

Default: '- {hash} {title}'

Markdown template for each commit entry in release notes. Available replacements:

• {title} A single line title of the commit.
• {hash} Abbreviated commit hash, gets linkified automatically in release notes.
• {url} Plain link to commit on GitHub.
• {date} Date of commit, could be specified in date-format.

Default: ''
Example: '^Meta:'
Example: true

Regex to exclude commits based on their title (don't include the initial and final /).

Setting this to true will enable the default preset, which may change over time, but is currently: /^meta|^document|^lint|^refactor|readme|dependencies|^v?\d+\.\d+\.\d+/i

Default: the tag that triggered the workflow run or the latest tag available

Specific tag for which to generate changelog.

Default: short
Example: local
Example: %d.%m.%Y

Format of {date} replacement as used by git log --date, as either a keyword or a strftime string. More info can be found in StackOverflow answer.

Default: desc
Example: asc

Set to asc if you want to have changelog printed in reverse order.

Default: false
Example: true

Set to true if you want to have draft release.

Default: false
Example: true

Set to true if you want to have prerelease instead release.

Default: false
Example: true

Set to true if you want to skip creating the release when all commits are excluded.

Will be set to true if skip-on-empty is enabled and a release was not created, false otherwise.

The release ID

The URL users can navigate to in order to view the release. i.e. https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/releases/v1.0.0

The URL for uploading assets to the release, which could be used by GitHub Actions for additional uses, for example the @actions/upload-release-asset GitHub Action

If you already have tags/releases without release notes, delete the empty releases (not the tags) and use vercel/release to create the release notes for those tags:

# Unsaved changes might be lost. Push your changes to GitHub before running this
npm install release -g
for tag in $(git tag); do
	git checkout $tag && release;
done
git checkout origin/master

MIT