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Minimalistic, opinionated, and predictable release automation tool.

I created Release because I wanted an easy and reliable way to publish my libraries. Over the years, I've tried every release automation tool out there and found a bunch of issues, ideological mismatches, and lacking developer experience in every one of them. I've grown so tired solving release bugs that I decided it would be more productive to create my own tool and, turns out, it was! I've been using Release for my projects ever since and never looked back. It does exactly what I want, the way I want it.

You can keep reading to learn more about what Release does differently, jump to theGetting started section, or read how itcompares to the alternatives.

Release performs the following release flow:

1. Analyze commits since the last published release (tag);
2. Determine the next package version perConventional Commits;
3. Lint your package viapublint to prevent publishing broken packages;
4. Run your publishing script (e.g.npm publish);
5. Create a release tag and a release commit in Git;
6. Create a new release with release notes on GitHub;
7. Push the changes;
8. Comment on relevant GitHub issues and pull request.

Release is anopinionated tool, which means it intentionally implements certain behaviors that I personally like without the ability to modify them. Let's talk about some of those behaviors.

Unlike other automation tools, Release makes sure to create a release commit, tag it with the appropriate tag, and push those changes to Gitonly after your release pipeline succeeded. This keeps your Git history clean and makes recovering from failed releases much easier.

Release requires your package to pass thepublint check before proceeding with the publishing. This ensures that you are publshing a valid package that won't break your consumers. If you've ever misconfigured anexports condition, you know how neat this is.

Release is written to work with projects hosted on GitHub because that is where I release my software. It relies on GitHub repository URL schemes, creates GitHub releases, crawls issue and pull request references.

Release is driven by the release configuration file. It does not use labels, tags, or other things to trigger or influence the release. It does not require a release pull request. You describe the release profiles, create an automated CI job, and get a continuous release pipeline. See therecipes on how to configure and use Release in GitHub Actions.

Release creates release commits in thechore(release): v${NEXT_VERSION} format. They will look like this in your Git history:

commit cee5327f0c7fc9048de7a18ef7b5339acd648a98 (tag: v1.2.0)Author: GitHub Actions <actions@github.com>Date:   Thu Apr 21 12:00:00 2022 +0100    chore(release): v1.2.0

npm i @ossjs/release -D

Create arelease.config.json file at the root of your project. Open the newly created file and create a new release profile:

// release.config.json{"$schema":"./node_modules/@ossjs/release/schema.json","profiles":[{"name":"latest","use":"npm publish"}]}

Generate aPersonal Access Token for your GitHub user with the following permissions:

• repo
• admin:repo_hook
• admin:org_hook

Expose the generated access token in theGITHUB_TOKEN environmental variable in your local and/or CI environment. This tool uses theGITHUB_TOKEN variable to communicate with GitHub on your behalf: read and write releases, post comments on relevant issues, etc.

Commit and push your changes following theConventional Commit message structure. Once done, run the following command to generate the next release automatically:

release publish

Congratulations! 🎉 You've successfully published your first release!

This tool expects a configuration file atrelease.config.json. The configuration file must export an object of the following shape:

{  profiles:Array<{/**     * Profile name.     *@default "latest"     */name:string/**     * The publishing script to run.     *@example "npm publish"     *@example "pnpm publish --no-git-checks"     */use:string/**     * Treat major version bumps as minor.     * This prevents publishing a package that is in a     * pre-release phase (< 1.0).     */prerelease?:boolean}>  use:string}

Publishes a new version of the package.

Running this command will publish the package according to thelatest defined profile:

release publish

Providing an explicit--profile option allows to publish the package accordig to another profile fromrelease.config.json:

release publish --profile nightly

Generates release notes and creates a new GitHub release for the given release tag.

This command is designed to recover from a partially failed release process, as well as to generate changelogs for old releases.

• This command requires an existing (merged) release tag;
• This command accepts past release tags;
• This command has no effect if a GitHub release for the given tag already exists.

# Generate release notes and create a GitHub release# for the release tag "v1.0.3".release notes v1.0.3

Displays information about a particular release.

Release information includes the following:

• Commit associated with the release tag;
• Release status (public/draft/unpublished);
• GitHub release URL if present.

# Display info about the latest release.release show

# Display info about a specific release.release show v0.19.2

This tool exposes a CLI which you can use with any continuous integration providers. No need to install actions, configure things, and pray for it to work.

{"name":"my-package","scripts":{"release":"release publish"}}

Before you proceed, make sure you'vegenerated GitHub Personal Access Token. Create anew repository/organization secret calledCI_GITHUB_TOKEN and use your Personal Access Token as the value for that secret.

You will be usingsecrets.CI_GITHUB_TOKEN instead of the defaultsecrets.GITHUB_TOKEN in the workflow file in order to have correct GitHub permissions during publishing. For example, your Personal Access Token will allow for Release to push release commits/tags to protected branches, while the defaultsecrets.GITHUB_TOKEN will not.

# .github/workflows/release.ymlname:releaseon:push:branches:[main]jobs:release:runs-on:ubuntu-lateststeps:      -uses:actions/checkout@v3with:# Fetch the entire commit history to include all commits.# By default, "actions/checkout" checks out the repository# at the commit that's triggered the workflow. This means# that the "@ossjs/release" may not be able to read older# commits that may affect the next release version number.fetch-depth:0# Provide your custom "CI_GITHUB_TOKEN" secret that holds# your GitHub Personal Access Token.token:${{ secrets.CI_GITHUB_TOKEN }}      -uses:actions/setup-node@v3with:always-auth:trueregistry-url:https://registry.npmjs.org# Configure the Git user that'd author release commits.      -name:Setup Gitrun:|          git config --local user.name "GitHub Actions"          git config --local user.email "actions@github.com"      -run:npm ci      -run:npm test      -run:npm run releaseenv:# Set the "GITHUB_TOKEN" environmental variable# required by "@ossjs/release" to communicate with GitHub.GITHUB_TOKEN:${{ secrets.CI_GITHUB_TOKEN }}# Set the "NODE_AUTH_TOKEN" environmental variable# that "actions/setup-node" uses as the "_authToken"# in the generated ".npmrc" file to authenticate# publishing to NPM registry.NODE_AUTH_TOKEN:${{ secrets.NPM_TOKEN }}

Create the configuration file and specify the release script:

// release.config.json{"profiles":[{"name":"latest",// Note that NPM doesn't need the next release version.// It will read the incremented version from "package.json"."use":"npm publish"}]}

If publishing a scoped package, use thenpm publish --access public script instead.

Runningyarn publish will prompt you for the next release version. Use the--new-version option and provide it with theRELEASE_VERSION environmental variable injected by Release that indicates the next release version based on your commit history.

// release.config.json{"$schema":"./node_modules/@ossjs/release/schema.json","profiles":[{"name":"latest","use":"yarn publish --new-version $RELEASE_VERSION"}]}

Yarn also doesn't seem to respect theNODE_AUTH_TOKEN environment variable. Please use theNPM_AUTH_TOKEN variable instead:

-run:yarn releaseenv:GITHUB_TOKEN:${{ secrets.CI_GITHUB_TOKEN }}# Use the "NPM_AUTH_TOKEN" instead of "NODE_AUTH_TOKEN".NPM_AUTH_TOKEN:${{ secrets.NPM_TOKEN }}

// release.config.json{"$schema":"./node_modules/@ossjs/release/schema.json","profiles":[{"name":"latest",// Prevent PNPM from checking for a clean Git state// to ignore the intermediate release state of the repository."use":"pnpm publish --no-git-checks"}]}

Leverage GitHub Actions and multiple Release configurations to release different tags from different Git branches.

// release.config.json{"$schema":"./node_modules/@ossjs/release/schema.json","profiles":[{"name":"latest","use":"npm publish"},{"name":"nightly","use":"npm publish --tag nightly"}]}

name:releaseon:push:# Set multiple branches to trigger this workflow.branches:[main, dev]jobs:release:runs-on:ubuntu-lateststeps:# Release to the default ("latest") tag on "main".      -name:Release latestif:github.ref == "refs/heads/main"run:npx release publish# Release to the "nightly" tag on "dev'.      -name:Release nightlyif:github.ref == "refs/heads/dev"run:npx release publish -p nightly

Below you see how Release compares to other tools. Keep in mind that I'm only comparing how those tools workby default because that's the only thing I care about. Unlike Release, other tools here can satisfy different use-cases through configuration, which is both a blessing and a curse.

¹ - requires additional plugins.