fully automated package/module/image publishing

This project aims to be an alternative to the original semantic-release implementation. Using Go, semantic-release can be installed by downloading a single binary and is, therefore, easier to install and does not require Node.js and npm. Furthermore, semantic-release has a built-in plugin system that allows to extend and customize its functionality.

• Automated version and release management
• No external dependencies required
• Runs on Linux, macOS and Windows
• Fully extensible via plugins
• Automated changelog generation
• Supports GitHub, GitLab and git
• Support for maintaining multiple major version releases

Instead of writing meaningless commit messages, we can take our time to think about the changes in the codebase and write them down. Following the Conventional Commits specification it is then possible to generate a helpful changelog and to derive the next semantic version number from them.

When semantic-release is setup it will do that after every successful continuous integration build of your default branch and publish the new version for you. This way no human is directly involved in the release process and your releases are guaranteed to be unromantic and unsentimental.

Source: semantic-release/semantic-release#how-does-it-work

You can enforce semantic commit messages using a git hook.

curl -SL https://get-release.xyz/semantic-release/linux/amd64 -o ./semantic-release && chmod +x ./semantic-release

npm install -g go-semantic-release

Full example can be found at go-semantic-release/example-go-application.

Example .github/workflows/ci.yml config:

name: CI
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - '**'
  pull_request:
    branches:
      - '**'
jobs:
  lint:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - uses: actions/setup-go@v3
        with:
          go-version: 1.19
      - uses: golangci/golangci-lint-action@v3
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: lint
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - uses: actions/setup-go@v3
        with:
          go-version: 1.19
      - run: go test -v ./...
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: test
    permissions:
      contents: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - uses: actions/setup-go@v3
        with:
          go-version: 1.19
      - uses: go-semantic-release/action@v1
        with:
          hooks: goreleaser
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

It is necessary to create a new Gitlab personal access token with the api scope here. Ensure the CI variable is protected and masked as the GITLAB_TOKEN has a lot of rights. There is an open issue for project specific tokens You can set the GitLab token via the GITLAB_TOKEN environment variable or the -token flag.

.gitlab-ci.yml

stages:
  # other stages
  - release

release:
  image:
    name: registry.gitlab.com/go-semantic-release/semantic-release:latest
    entrypoint: [""]
  stage: release
  # when: manual # Add this if you want to manually create releases
  only:
    - master
  script:
    - semantic-release # Add --allow-no-changes if you want to create a release for each push

If you do not provide a PAT the job token will be used. This restricted token can create releases but not read commits. The git strategy must be set to clone so that we can read the commits from the repository. See example below

.gitlab-ci.yml

variables:
  GIT_STRATEGY: clone

stages:
  # other stages
  - release

release:
  image:
    name: registry.gitlab.com/go-semantic-release/semantic-release:latest
    entrypoint: [""]
  stage: release
  # when: manual # Add this if you want to manually create releases
  only:
    - master
  script:
    - semantic-release
    # - semantic-release --allow-no-changes # create a release for each push
    # - semantic-release --provider gitlab --provider-opt log_order=ctime # traverse commits by committer time (commits in merge requests will affect the calculated version) 

The full example can be found at https://gitlab.com/go-semantic-release/example-go-application.

Example .gitlab-ci.yml config:

image: golang:1.19

stages:
  - test
  - release

test:
  stage: test
  except:
    - tags
  script:
    - go test -v ./...
    - go build ./
    - ./example-go-application

release:
  stage: release
  only:
    - main
  script:
    - curl -SL https://get-release.xyz/semantic-release/linux/amd64 -o ./semantic-release && chmod +x ./semantic-release
    - ./semantic-release --hooks goreleaser

Since v2, semantic-release is equipped with a plugin system. The plugins are standalone binaries that use hashicorp/go-plugin as a plugin library. semantic-release automatically downloads the necessary plugins if they don't exist locally. The plugins are stored in the .semrel directory of the current working directory in the following format: .semrel/<os>_<arch>/<plugin name>/<version>/. The go-semantic-release plugins registry (https://registry.go-semantic-release.xyz/) is used to resolve plugins and to download the correct binary. With the new plugin-registry service the API also supports batch requests to resolve multiple plugins at once and caching of the plugins.

As plugins are only downloaded if they do not exist in the .semrel folder, it is possible to download the plugins and archive the .semrel folder. This way it is possible to run semantic-release in an air-gapped environment.

# specify all required plugins and download them
./semantic-release --download-plugins --show-progress --provider github --ci-condition github --hooks goreleaser
# archive the .semrel folder
tar -czvf ./semrel-plugins.tgz .semrel/

# copy the archive to the air-gapped environment

# extract the archive
tar -xzvf ./semrel-plugins.tgz
# run semantic-release
./semantic-release --provider github --condition github --hooks goreleaser

• Provider (Docs)
  • GitHub
  • GitLab
  • Git
• CI Condition (Docs)
  • GitHub Actions
  • GitLab CI
  • Bitbucket Pipelines
  • Default
• Commit Analyzer (Docs)
  • Conventional Commits
• Changelog Generator (Docs)
  • Default
• Hooks (Docs)
  • GoReleaser
  • npm-binary-releaser
  • plugin-registry-update
  • exec
• Files Updater (Docs)
  • npm
  • helm

Plugins can be configured using CLI flags or the .semrelrc config file. By using a @ sign after the plugin name, the required version of the plugin can be specified. Otherwise, any locally installed version will be used. If the plugin does not exist locally, the latest version will be downloaded. This is an example of the .semrelrc config file:

{
  "plugins": {
    "commit-analyzer": {
      "name": "default@^1.0.0"
    },
    "ci-condition": {
      "name": "default"
    },
    "changelog-generator": {
      "name": "default",
      "options": {
        "emojis": "true"
      }
    },
    "provider": {
      "name": "gitlab",
      "options": {
        "gitlab_projectid": "123456"
      }
    },
    "files-updater": {
      "names": ["npm"]
    }
  }
}

Beta release support empowers you to release beta, rc, etc. versions with semantic-release (e.g. v2.0.0-beta.1). To enable this feature you need to create a new branch (e.g. beta/v2) and check in a .semrelrc file with the following content:

{
  "maintainedVersion": "2-beta"
}

If you commit to this branch a new incremental pre-release is created everytime you push. (2.0.0-beta.1, 2.0.0-beta.2, ...)

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright © 2024 Christoph Witzko