Release GitHub Actions

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This is a GitHub Actions that automates the release of GitHub Actions.
Once you create a new tag, this action will automatically

1. Run build
2. Create branch for release
3. Change tags to release branch
4. If there is release which has same tag name and has been published, re-publish it (Because if the tag is changed, the release will be in a draft state).

Table of Contents

Usage

e.g. .github/workflows/release.yml

#on:
#  push:
#    tags:
#      - "v*"

on: create

name: Release
jobs:
  release:
    name: Release GitHub Actions
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: technote-space/release-github-actions@v6

More details of target event

CLI Tool

Screenshot

Options

Execute commands

Build

• If package.json includes prepare, build, production, prod, package or pack in scripts, the commands are used for build. (You can change this with BUILD_COMMAND_TARGET)
• If command does not have install command like npm run install or yarn install, install commands are added.

so if BUILD_COMMAND is not provided and package.json has build script, the following commands are executed for build.

yarn install
yarn build
yarn install --production

If build and pack are included, the commands are:

yarn install
yarn build
yarn pack
yarn install --production

Delete files

To execute GitHub Actions, src files used for build, test files, test settings, etc. are not required.
And GitHub Actions is downloaded every time when it is used, so fewer files are better.

CLEAN_TARGETS option is used for this purpose.
default: .[!.]*,__tests__,docs,src,*.js,*.ts,*.json,*.lock,*.yml,*.yaml

rm -rdf .[!.]*
rm -rdf *.js
rm -rdf *.ts
rm -rdf *.json
rm -rdf *.lock
rm -rdf *.yml
rm -rdf *.yaml
rm -rdf __tests__ docs src

(action.yml is not subject to deletion.)

The default setting assumes the use of Action template for TypeScript or Action template for JavaScript.
https://github.com/actions/typescript-action
https://github.com/actions/javascript-action

However, these templates have security issues etc, you must do the following.

Action template for JavaScript

If a pull request includes a built file, it is highly likely that even malicious code will be missed in a review, so you need to fix .gitignore as follows:

.gitignore

+ /dist

Action template for TypeScript

Since processing by ncc is unnecessary, delete the related commands and packages and modify action.yml to use script built with tsc.

action.yml

 name: 'Your name here'
 description: 'Provide a description here'
 author: 'Your name or organization here'
 inputs:
   myInput:              # change this
     description: 'input description here'
     default: 'default value if applicable'
 runs:
   using: 'node12'
-  main: 'dist/index.js'
+  main: 'lib/main.js'

package.json

   "scripts": {
     "build": "tsc",
     "format": "prettier --write **/*.ts",
     "format-check": "prettier --check **/*.ts",
     "lint": "eslint src/**/*.ts",
-    "package": "ncc build --source-map --license licenses.txt",
-    "test": "jest",
-    "all": "npm run build && npm run format && npm run lint && npm run package && npm test"
+    "test": "jest"
   },

  "devDependencies": {
     "@types/jest": "^26.0.10",
     "@types/node": "^14.6.0",
     "@typescript-eslint/parser": "^3.10.1",
-    "@vercel/ncc": "^0.23.0",
     "eslint": "^7.7.0",
     "eslint-plugin-github": "^4.1.1",
     "eslint-plugin-jest": "^23.20.0",
     "jest": "^24.9.0",
     "jest-circus": "^26.4.2",
     "js-yaml": "^3.14.0",
     "prettier": "2.1.1",
     "ts-jest": "^24.3.0",
     "typescript": "^4.0.2"
   }

You can see an example of GitHub Actions with unnecessary files deleted below.
https://github.com/technote-space/release-github-actions/tree/gh-actions

Action event details

Target events

condition

• tags
  • semantic versioning tag (e.g. v1.2.3)
  • test tag (e.g. test/v1.2.3)

Motivation

Releasing GitHub Actions needs all build files and dependencies like node_modules, but are not usually committed.
So if you want to release GitHub Actions, you have to do following steps.

1. Develop locally on the branch for develop
2. Build for release
3. Commit all source code including dependencies like node_modules to branch for release
4. Add tags (consider major, minor and patch versions)
5. Push to GitHub
6. Publish release

It is very troublesome to do this steps for every release.

If you use this GitHub Actions, the steps to do are simpler.

1. Develop locally on the branch for develop
2. Publish release (Create tag)
3. Wait for the automated steps to finish
   1. Build for release
   2. Commit all source code including dependencies like node_modules to branch for release
   3. Add tags (consider major, minor and patch versions)
   4. Push to GitHub

Addition

Tags

Tag name format must be Semantic Versioning.
The following tags will be created.

• tag name
• major tag name (generated by tag name)
  • e.g. v1
• minor tag name (generated by tag name)
  • e.g. v1.2
• patch tag name (generated by tag name)
  • e.g. v1.2.3

Author

GitHub (Technote)
Blog