Introduction
📦🚀 semantic-release
Fully automated version management and package publishing
semantic-release automates the whole package release workflow including: determining the next version number, generating the release notes and publishing the package.
This removes the immediate connection between human emotions and version numbers, strictly following the Semantic Versioning specification.
Trust us, this will change your workflow for the better. – egghead.io
Highlights
Fully automated release
Enforce Semantic Versioning specification
New features and fixes are immediately available to users
Notify maintainers and users of new releases
Use formalized commit message convention to document changes in the codebase
Publish on different distribution channels (such as npm dist-tags) based on git merges
Integrate with your continuous integration workflow
Avoid potential errors associated with manual releases
Support any package managers and languages via plugins
Simple and reusable configuration via shareable configurations
How does it work?
Commit message format
semantic-release uses the commit messages to determine the type of changes in the codebase. Following formalized conventions for commit messages, semantic-release automatically determines the next semantic version number, generates a changelog and publishes the release.
By default semantic-release uses Angular Commit Message Conventions. The commit message format can be changed with the preset or config options of the @semantic-release/commit-analyzer and @semantic-release/release-notes-generator plugins.
Tools such as commitizen or commitlint can be used to help contributors and enforce valid commit messages.
Here is an example of the release type that will be done based on a commit messages:
Commit message | Release type |
| Patch Release |
|
|
|
|
Automation with CI
semantic-release is meant to be executed on the CI environment after every successful build on the release branch. This way no human is directly involved in the release process and the releases are guaranteed to be unromantic and unsentimental.
Triggering a release
For each new commits added to one of the release branches (for example master, next, beta), with git push or by merging a pull request or merging from another branch, a CI build is triggered and runs the semantic-release command to make a release if there are codebase changes since the last release that affect the package functionalities.
semantic-release offers various ways to control the timing, the content and the audience of published releases. See example workflows in the following recipes:
Release steps
After running the tests, the command semantic-release will execute the following steps:
Step | Description |
Verify Conditions | Verify all the conditions to proceed with the release. |
Get last release | Obtain the commit corresponding to the last release by analyzing Git tags. |
Analyze commits | Determine the type of release based on the commits added since the last release. |
Verify release | Verify the release conformity. |
Generate notes | Generate release notes for the commits added since the last release. |
Create Git tag | Create a Git tag corresponding to the new release version. |
Prepare | Prepare the release. |
Publish | Publish the release. |
Notify | Notify of new releases or errors. |
Requirements
In order to use semantic-release you need:
To host your code in a Git repository
Use a Continuous Integration service that allows you to securely set up credentials
Git CLI version 2.7.1 or higher installed in your Continuous Integration environment
Node.js version 10.18 or higher installed in your Continuous Integration environment
Documentation
Extending
Get help
Badge
Let people know that your package is published using semantic-release by including this badge in your readme.
Team
Last updated
