git-releaser

git-releaser is a tool for creating Git releases based on Semantic Versioning heavily inspired by release-please.

It is designed to be used in CI/CD pipelines to automate the creation of Git releases using PRs.

Providers

Currently, git-releaser works best with GitLab. GitHub support is planned and more providers can be added in the future.

CLI Installation

Linux/Mac via brew

brew tap git-releaser/git-releaser
brew install git-releaser

Failing Installation on WSL or Linux (missing gcc)

When installing Homebrew on WSL or Linux, you may encounter the following error:

==> Installing git-releaser from git-releaser/git-releaser Error: The following formula cannot be installed from a bottle and must be
built from the source. git-releaser Install Clang or run brew install gcc.

If you install gcc as suggested, the problem will persist. Therefore, you need to install the build-essential package.

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install build-essential

Quick Start

You can either use the CLI tool git-releaser initialize -p provider to generate the initial configuration or create it manually.

The most important part of the configuration is the .git-releaser-manifest.yaml file which contains the current version of your project. This file should be committed to your repository.

Please note that the first release will be created based on the version specified in the configuration file. Afterward, the version will be updated automatically.

{"version": "0.1.0"}

GitLab

• Create a new GitLab Personal Access Token with api scope.
• Create a new .git-releaser-manifest.yaml in your repository with the following content:

{"version": "0.1.0"}

• Create a new .gitlab-ci.yml file in your repository with the following content:

stages:
  - release

variables:
  DOCKER_IMAGE: "ghcr.io/git-releaser/git-releaser:dev-202312060656"
  GIT_RELEASER_PROVIDER: "gitlab"
  GIT_RELEASER_USER_ID: "<your user-id>"
  GIT_RELEASER_TOKEN: $PAT
  GIT_RELEASER_PROJECT_URL: "<your-project-url>"
  GIT_RELEASER_PROJECT_ID: $CI_PROJECT_ID

run-release:
  stage: release
  script:
    - git clone $GIT_RELEASER_PROJECT_URL
    - cd git-releaser-demo
    - /git-releaser update
  image:
    name: $DOCKER_IMAGE
    entrypoint: [""]
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "main"
      when: always

• If you run the SaaS version of GitLab, the API URL is automatically detected. If you run a self-hosted version of GitLab, you need to set the GIT_RELEASER_API_URL variable to the URL of your GitLab instance.

• Afterwards, commit and push the changes to your repository. This will trigger a new pipeline which will create a new release based on the latest PRs merged into the main branch.

• When a new change is merged into the main branch, a new release merge will be created automatically.

• When this merge request is merged, a new release will be created automatically.

GitHub

Take a look at our GitHub Action to use git-releaser with GitHub.

Updating the version in config files

git-releaser can also update the version in config files. To do so, you need to specify the extra files in a .git-releaser-config.yaml file:

extra_files:
- path: test2.txt

If the test2.txt file contains the following content:

my_version: 0.0.1 # x-git-releaser-version
other_version: 0.0.2

git-releaser will update the version specified n my_version during the release.

Contributing

Please read our contributing guide.

Community