GitHub Action - Releases API

Please note: This repository is currently unmaintained by a team of developers at GitHub. The repository is here and you can use it as an example, or in Actions. However please be aware that we are not going to be updating issues or pull requests on this repository.

Maintained Actions:

To reflect this state we’ve marked this repository as Archived.

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If you have found a security issue please submit it here.

This GitHub Action (written in JavaScript) wraps the GitHub Release API, specifically the Create a Release endpoint, to allow you to leverage GitHub Actions to create releases.

Usage

Pre-requisites

Create a workflow .yml file in your .github/workflows directory. An example workflow is available below. For more information, reference the GitHub Help Documentation for Creating a workflow file.

Inputs

For more information on these inputs, see the API Documentation

tag_name: The name of the tag for this release
release_name: The name of the release
body: Text describing the contents of the release. Optional, and not needed if using body_path.
body_path: A file with contents describing the release. Optional, and not needed if using body.
draft: true to create a draft (unpublished) release, false to create a published one. Default: false
prerelease: true to identify the release as a prerelease. false to identify the release as a full release. Default: false
commitish : Any branch or commit SHA the Git tag is created from, unused if the Git tag already exists. Default: SHA of current commit
owner: The name of the owner of the repo. Used to identify the owner of the repository. Used when cutting releases for external repositories. Default: Current owner
repo: The name of the repository. Used to identify the repository on which to release. Used when cutting releases for external repositories. Default: Current repository

`body_path`

The body_path is valuable for dynamically creating a .md within code commits and even within the Github Action steps leading up to the create-release.

Outputs

For more information on these outputs, see the API Documentation for an example of what these outputs look like

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

Example workflow - create a release

On every push to a tag matching the pattern v*, create a release:

on:
  push:
    # Sequence of patterns matched against refs/tags
    tags:
      - 'v*' # Push events to matching v*, i.e. v1.0, v20.15.10

name: Create Release

jobs:
  build:
    name: Create Release
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Create Release
        id: create_release
        uses: actions/create-release@v1
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} # This token is provided by Actions, you do not need to create your own token
        with:
          tag_name: ${{ github.ref }}
          release_name: Release ${{ github.ref }}
          body: |
            Changes in this Release
            - First Change
            - Second Change
          draft: false
          prerelease: false

This will create a Release, as well as a release event, which could be handled by a third party service, or by GitHub Actions for additional uses, for example the @actions/upload-release-asset GitHub Action. This uses the GITHUB_TOKEN provided by the virtual environment, so no new token is needed.

Contributing

We would love you to contribute to @actions/create-release, pull requests are welcome! Please see the CONTRIBUTING.md for more information.

License

The scripts and documentation in this project are released under the MIT License