draft-release

draft-release

draft-release - Draft a new release based on conventional commits and prepare release notes

This action helps create a draft release based on the contents of the changelog and commit history. It is designed to be used in a manually triggered workflow to draft a release.

This action checks out the latest commit in the branch you run the workflow from, updates files (including CHANGELOG.md, VERSION, CITATION.cff, and codemeta.json), and then creates a draft release with the new version and changelog entry.

After the workflow completes, navigate to the Releases page on GitHub and ensure everything looks correct, then publish the release when you’re ready.

Usage

Input files:

• CHANGELOG.md - a changelog or news file with entries in reverse chronological order. The newest entry should contain a header with the phrase “development version”.
• VERSION - a single-source version file.
• CITATION.cff - a citation file. (optional)

When you’re ready to draft a new release, run the workflow manually. After the workflow completes, there will be a new draft release that you can review and choose to publish.

Basic example

draft-release.yml

name: draft-release

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      version-tag:
        description: |
          Semantic version tag for next release.
          If not provided, it will be determined based on conventional commit history.
          Example: v2.5.11
        required: false
        type: string
        default: ""

permissions:
  contents: write
  pull-requests: write
  actions: write

jobs:
  draft-release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v7
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0 # required to include tags
      - uses: CCBR/actions/draft-release@v0.7
        with:
          github-token: ${{ github.token }}
          version-tag: ${{ github.event.inputs.version-tag }}

Customized inputs

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v4
    with:
      fetch-depth: 0 # required to include tags
  - uses: CCBR/actions/draft-release@main
    with:
      github-token: ${{ github.token }}
      version-tag: ${{ github.event.inputs.version-tag }}
      ccbr-actions-version: main
      python-verson: 3.11
      draft-branch: "release-draft"
      version-filepath: VERSION
      changelog-filepath: CHANGELOG.md
      citation-filepath: CITATION.cff
      dev-header: "development version"
      github-actor: "41898282+github-actions[bot]"

Inputs

• version-tag: Semantic version tag for next release. If not provided, it will be determined based on conventional commit history. Example: v2.5.11.
• github-token: GitHub Actions token (e.g. github.token). Required.
• ccbr-actions-version: The version of ccbr_actions to use. Required. Default: latest.
• python-version: The version of Python to install. Required. Default: 3.11.
• draft-branch: The branch name to push changes to for the release draft. Required. Default: release-draft.
• version-filepath: Path to the file containing the current version. Default: VERSION.
• description-filepath: Path to the R DESCRIPTION file, used when an R package is detected. Default: DESCRIPTION.
• changelog-filepath: Path to the changelog or news file. Default: CHANGELOG.md.
• citation-filepath: Path to the citation file. Default: CITATION.cff.
• dev-header: Header string to match to find the development version entry in the changelog, typically of the form ‘## development version’. Default: development version.
• github-actor: Username of GitHub actor for the git commit when the docs branch is deployed. Required. Default: 41898282+github-actions[bot].