create-gh-release-action

GitHub Action for creating GitHub Releases based on changelog.

• Usage
  • Inputs
  • Outputs
  • Example workflow: Basic usage
  • Example workflow: Create a draft release
  • Example workflow: Custom title
  • Example workflow: No changelog
  • Example workflow: Reject releases from outside of main branch
  • Other examples
• Supported events
• Compatibility
• Related Projects
• License

Usage

This action creates GitHub Releases based on changelog that specified by changelog option.

Currently, changelog format and supported tag names have the following rule:

• This action uses parse-changelog to parse changelog. Only the changelog format accepted by parse-changelog is supported.

  Basically, Keep a Changelog and similar formats are supported, but we recommend checking if parse-changelog can parse your project's changelog as you expected.

  If the changelog option is not specified, the changelog is ignored and only the release created.

• The supported tag format is v?MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH(-PRERELEASE)?(+BUILD_METADATA)?. (leading "v", pre-release version, and build metadata are optional.) The optional prefix is also supported. This is based on Semantic Versioning

Inputs

Name	Required	Description	Type	Default
token	true 1	GitHub token for creating GitHub Releases (see action.yml for more)	String
changelog	false	Path to changelog (variables $tag, $version, $prefix, and any string)	String
allow-missing-changelog	false	Create the release even if the changelog entry corresponding to the version is missing. The default value of the changelog will be an empty string.	Boolean	false
title	false	Format of title (variables $tag, $version, $prefix, and any string)	String	$tag
draft	false	Create a draft release (true or false)	Boolean	false
branch	false	Reject releases from commits not contained in branches that match the specified pattern (regular expression)	String
prefix	false	An optional pattern that matches a prefix for the release tag, before the version number (see action.yml for more)	String
ref	false	Fully-formed tag ref for this release (see action.yml for more)	String

Outputs

Name	Description
computed-prefix	The computed prefix, including '-' and 'v'.
version	The version number extracted from the tag. The tag name is a concatenation of computed-prefix and version.

Example workflow: Basic usage

name: Release

permissions:
  contents: write

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - v[0-9]+.*

jobs:
  create-release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: taiki-e/create-gh-release-action@v1
        with:
          # (Optional) Path to changelog.
          changelog: CHANGELOG.md
          # (Required) GitHub token for creating GitHub Releases.
          token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Example workflow: Create a draft release

name: Release

permissions:
  contents: write

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - v[0-9]+.*

jobs:
  create-release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: taiki-e/create-gh-release-action@v1
        with:
          # (Optional) Path to changelog.
          changelog: CHANGELOG.md
          # (Optional) Create a draft release.
          # [default value: false]
          draft: true
          # (Required) GitHub token for creating GitHub Releases.
          token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Example workflow: Custom title

You can customize the title of the release by title option.

Example of the created release.

name: Release

permissions:
  contents: write

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - v[0-9]+.*

jobs:
  create-release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: taiki-e/create-gh-release-action@v1
        with:
          # (Optional)
          changelog: CHANGELOG.md
          # (Optional) Format of title.
          # [default value: $tag]
          # [possible values: variables $tag, $version, and any string]
          title: $version
          # (Required) GitHub token for creating GitHub Releases.
          token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Example workflow: No changelog

If the changelog option is not specified, the changelog is ignored and only the release created.

Example of the created release.

name: Release

permissions:
  contents: write

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - v[0-9]+.*

jobs:
  create-release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: taiki-e/create-gh-release-action@v1
        with:
          # (Required) GitHub token for creating GitHub Releases.
          token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Example workflow: Reject releases from outside of main branch

You can reject releases from commits not contained in branches that match the specified pattern by using branch option.

name: Release

permissions:
  contents: write

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - v[0-9]+.*

jobs:
  create-release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: taiki-e/create-gh-release-action@v1
        with:
          # (Optional) Path to changelog.
          changelog: CHANGELOG.md
          # (Optional) Reject releases from commits not contained in branches
          # that match the specified pattern (regular expression)
          branch: main
          # (Required) GitHub token for creating GitHub Releases.
          token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Other examples

• cargo-hack
• tracing

Supported events

The following two events are supported by default:

• tags (on.push.tags)

  For example:

  on:
    push:
      tags:
        - v[0-9]+.*

• GitHub release (on.release)

  For example:

  on:
    release:
      types: [created]

You can create a release from arbitrary event to arbitrary tag by specifying the ref input option.

For example, to create a release to the my_tag tag, specify ref input option as follows:

with:
  ref: refs/tags/my_tag

Compatibility

This action has been tested for GitHub-hosted runners (Ubuntu, macOS, Windows). To use this action in self-hosted runners or in containers, at least the following tools are required:

• bash, GNU Coreutils, GNU grep, GNU tar
• curl
• git
• gh (GitHub CLI)

Related Projects

• upload-rust-binary-action: GitHub Action for building and uploading Rust binary to GitHub Releases.
• parse-changelog: Simple changelog parser, written in Rust. Used in this action.
• setup-cross-toolchain-action: GitHub Action for setup toolchains for cross compilation and cross testing for Rust.
• install-action: GitHub Action for installing development tools (mainly from GitHub Releases).
• cache-cargo-install-action: GitHub Action for cargo install with cache.

License

Licensed under either of Apache License, Version 2.0 or MIT license at your option.

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.

Footnotes

1. Required one of token input option or GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable. ↩