Frequently Asked Questions
Last updated
Last updated
package.json
’s version not updated in my repository? takes care of updating the package.json
’s version before publishing to .
By default, only the published package will contain the version, which is the only place where it is really required, but the updated package.json
will not be pushed to the Git repository
However, the plugin can be used to push the updated package.json
as well as other files to the Git repository.
If you wish to only update the package.json
and push via Git you can set the project to "private": true,
within your package.json
to prevent publishing to .
package.json
’s version ?The package.json
’s version will be updated by the semantic-release
command just before publishing to , therefore it won't be available for scripts ran before the semantic-release
command.
As the plugin uses the to update the package.json
version and publish the package, all will be executed.
You can run your build script in:
the prepublishOnly
or prepack
hook so it will be executed during the publish
step of @semantic-release/npm
the postversion
hook so it will be executed during the prepare
step of @semantic-release/npm
, which allow for example to update files before committing them with the plugin
If using npm hook scripts is not possible, and alternative solution is to plugin to run your script in the prepare
step:
Yes, semantic-release is a Node CLI application, but it can be used to publish any type of packages.
To publish a non-Node package (without a package.json
) you would need to:
Note: This is a theoretical example where the command set-version
update the project version with the value passed as its first argument and publish-package
publishes the package to a registry.
Yes, semantic-release can be used with any CI service, as long as it provides:
However this is not the recommended approach, as running unit and integration tests on an independent machine before publishing software is a crucial part of the release workflow.
If you have introduced a breaking bug in a release you have 2 options:
If you have a fix immediately ready, commit and push it (or merge it via a pull request) to the release branch
In both cases semantic-release will publish a new release, so your package users will get the fixed/reverted version.
In any case do not remove the Git tag associated with the buggy version, otherwise semantic-release will later try to republish that version. Publishing a version after un-publishing is not supported by most package managers.
.npmrc
options?Or with the publishConfig.access
key in your project's package.json
:
You can trigger a release by pushing to your Git repository. You deliberately cannot trigger a specific version release, because this is the whole point of semantic-release.
Yes, every commits that contains [skip release]
or [release skip]
in their message will be excluded from the commit analysis and won't participate in the release type determination.
Commit
Release type
Commit with breaking change
Major Breaking release
Commit with type feat
Minor Feature release
Commit with type fix
Patch release
Commit with type perf
Patch release
It is indeed a great idea because it forces you to follow best practices. If you don’t feel comfortable releasing every feature or fix on your master
you might not treat your master
branch as intended.
Branching is a core concept in Git, and the entire GitHub Flow is based upon it. There's only one rule: anything in the master branch is always deployable.
0.0.1
?Yes with the which prints to the console the next version to be published and the release notes.
Use a semantic-release installation
Set semantic-release via
Make sure your CI job executing the semantic-release
command has access to to execute the semantic-release
command
See the for more details on specific CI environments.
In addition you will need to configure the semantic-release to disable the plugin which is used by default and use a plugin for your project type.
If there is no specific plugin for your project type you can use the plugin to publish the release with a shell command.
Here is a basic example to create and use a shell command to publish:
See the for more details on specific project types.
A way to set via environment variables
A way to guarantee that the semantic-release
command is
See the for more details on specific CI environments.
Yes, you can by explicitly setting the option. You will also have to set the required via environment variables on your local machine, for example:
Yes, with the shareable configuration.
See the for the CI configuration.
By default semantic-release uses the plugin to publish a . For other Git hosted environment the and plugins can be used via .
See the plugins documentation for more details.
Yes, the publishing to the npm registry can be disabled with the option of the plugin. In addition the option allow to generate the package tarball in order to publish it to your repository with the or to a with the plugin.
See the plugin documentation for more details.
Otherwise, that introduced the bug and push the revert commit (or merge it via a pull request) to the release branch
Depending on the package manager you are using, you might be able to un-publish or deprecate a release, in order to prevent users from downloading it by accident. For example, npm allows you to after release. You may also a release if you would rather avoid un-publishing.
Note: If you are using the default be aware that it uses a different revert commit format than the standard one created by , contrary to what is . Therefore, if you revert a commit with , use the to format the message according to the . See for more details.
Yes, all the are supported via the file at the root of your repository.
See the plugin documentation for more details.
The can be set in the file at the root of your repository:
Any npm compatible registry is supported with the plugin. For Artifactory versions prior to 5.4, the legacy authentication has to be used (with NPM_USERNAME
, NPM_PASSWORD
and NPM_EMAIL
).
See for more details.
See documentation for Artifactiry configuration.
By default semantic-release uses the and triggers releases based on the following rules:
See the plugin documentation for more details.
This is fully customizable with the plugin's .
From :
If you need more control over the timing of releases, see for different options.
Note: Only the codebase changes altering the published package will trigger a release (for example new features, bug fixes or performance improvements would trigger a release while refactoring or changing code style would not). See for more details.
This is not supported by semantic-release as it's not considered a good practice, mostly because rules applies differently to major version zero.
If your project is under heavy development, with frequent breaking changes, and is not production ready yet we recommend .
See for more details on and the recommendation to start at version 1.0.0
.
semantic-release has a full unit and integration test suite that tests npm
publishes against the .
In addition the verifies that all necessary conditions for proceeding with a release are met, and a new release will be performed .
semantic-release is written using the latest features, without transpilation which requires Node version 14.17 or higher.
See for more details and solutions.
semantic-release uses Git CLI commands to read information about the repository such as branches, commit history and tags. Certain commands and options (such as or bug fixes related to git ls-files
) used by semantic-release are only available in Git version 2.7.1 and higher.
– short for "npm exec" – is a CLI to find and execute npm binaries within the local node_modules
folder or in the $PATH. If a binary can't be located npx will download the required package and execute it from its cache location. The tool is bundled with >= 5.2, or can be installed via npm install -g npx
. For more details and motivation read the by .