When run, this command line interface automatically generates a new GitHub Release and populates it with the changes (commits) made since the last release.
Usage
Firstly, install the package from npm (you'll need at least Node.js 7.6.0):
npm install -g release
Alternatively, you can use Yarn to install it:
yarn global add release
Once that's done, you can run this command inside your project's directory:
release <type>
As you can see, a <type> argument can be passed. If you leave it out, a GitHub Release will be created from the most recent commit and tag.
According to the SemVer spec, the argument can have one of these values:
major: Incompatible API changes were introducedminor: Functionality was added in a backwards-compatible mannerpatch: Backwards-compatible bug fixes were applied
In addition to those values, we also support creating pre-releases like 3.0.0-canary.1:
release pre
You can also apply a custom suffix in place of "canary" like this:
release pre <suffix>
Assuming that you provide "beta" as the <suffix> your release will then be 3.0.0-beta.1 – and so on...
Options
The following command will show you a list of all available options:
release help
Pre-Defining Types
If you want to automate release even further, specify the change type of your commits by adding it to the title or description within parenthesis:
Error logging works now (patch)
Assuming that you've defined it for a certain commit, release won't ask you to set a type for it manually. This will make the process of creating a release even faster.
To pre-define that a commit should be excluded from the list, you can use this keyword:
This is a commit message (ignore)
Custom Hook
Sometimes you might want to filter the information that gets inserted into new releases by adding an intro text, replacing certain data or just changing the order of the changes.
With a custom hook, the examples above (and many more) are very easy to accomplish:
By default, release will look for a file named release.js in the root directory of your project. This file should export a function with two parameters and always return a String (the final release):
module.exports = async (markdown, metaData) => {
// Use the available data to create a custom release
return markdown
}
In the example above, markdown contains the release as a String (if you just want to replace something). In addition, metaData contains these properties:
