GitHub Action - Releases API

This GitHub Action (written in JavaScript) wraps the GitHub Release API, specifically the Create a Release endpoint, to allow you to leverage GitHub Actions to create releases.

Usage

Pre-requisites

Create a workflow .yml file in your .github/workflows directory. An example workflow is available below. For more information, reference the GitHub Help Documentation for Creating a workflow file.

Inputs

For more information on these inputs, see the API Documentation

tag_name: The name of the tag for this release
release_name: The name of the release
body: Text describing the contents of the release. Optional, and not needed if using body_path.
body_path: A file with contents describing the release. Optional, and not needed if using body.
draft: true to create a draft (unpublished) release, false to create a published one. Default: false
prerelease: true to identify the release as a prerelease. false to identify the release as a full release. Default: false
commitish : Any branch or commit SHA the Git tag is created from, unused if the Git tag already exists. Default: SHA of current commit
owner: The name of the owner of the repo. Used to identify the owner of the repository. Used when cutting releases for external repositories. Default: Current owner
repo: The name of the repository. Used to identify the repository on which to release. Used when cutting releases for external repositories. Default: Current repository

`body_path`

The body_path is valuable for dynamically creating a .md within code commits and even within the Github Action steps leading up to the create-release.

Outputs

For more information on these outputs, see the API Documentation for an example of what these outputs look like

id: The release ID
html_url: The URL users can navigate to in order to view the release. i.e. https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/releases/v1.0.0
upload_url: The URL for uploading assets to the release, which could be used by GitHub Actions for additional uses, for example the @actions/upload-release-asset GitHub Action

Example workflow - create a release

On every push to a tag matching the pattern v*, create a release:

on:
  push:
    # Sequence of patterns matched against refs/tags
    tags:
      - 'v*' # Push events to matching v*, i.e. v1.0, v20.15.10

name: Create Release

jobs:
  build:
    name: Create Release
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Create Release
        id: create_release
        uses: actions/create-release@v1
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} # This token is provided by Actions, you do not need to create your own token
        with:
          tag_name: ${{ github.ref }}
          release_name: Release ${{ github.ref }}
          body: |
            Changes in this Release
            - First Change
            - Second Change
          draft: false
          prerelease: false

This will create a Release, as well as a release event, which could be handled by a third party service, or by GitHub Actions for additional uses, for example the @actions/upload-release-asset GitHub Action. This uses the GITHUB_TOKEN provided by the virtual environment, so no new token is needed.

Contributing

We would love you to contribute to @actions/create-release, pull requests are welcome! Please see the CONTRIBUTING.md for more information.

License

The scripts and documentation in this project are released under the MIT License

CenturyLink/create-release