release-please-manifest-action

Opinionated action for running release-please in manifest mode.

An opinionated composite action that wraps release-please-action and create-github-app-token.

Features

• Supports having release-please authenticate as a GitHub App.
• Supports dynamic target branch based on regular expression pattern, enabling maintenance releases.
• Defaults to looking for release-please's config and manifest files within the top-level .github directory instead of in the repository root.

Note: This action is not well suited for multi package/root release-please configurations, as it does not support dynamic path-based outputs. A workaround is to parse the raw output JSON string, but this is not ideal.

Usage

All usage examples below assume you have placed your release-please-config.json and .release-please-manifest.json within the .github directory in the root of the repository.

See release-please's manifest-releaser documentation for details about the config and manifest files.

Basic (Actions Token)

This example will have release-please authenticate using secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN that is automatically available to all actions.

This will prevent checks / GitHub Actions running against any Release Pull Requests raised by release-please. This is a feature of GitHub as a means of trying to avoid GitHub Actions jobs triggering themselves, and causing infinite loops.

If you need checks to run against Release Pull Requests, you will need to have release-please authenticate with a Personal Access Token (PAT), or as a GitHub App.

on: push
jobs:
  release-please:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
    steps:
      - uses: jimeh/release-please-manifest-action@v3

The above is equivalent to:

on: push
jobs:
  release-please:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
    steps:
      - uses: googleapis/release-please-action@v4
        id: release-please
        with:
          config-file: .github/release-please-config.json
          manifest-file: .github/.release-please-manifest.json

Note: Outputs are not included in this equivalence example.

Personal Access Token (PAT) Authentication

This example will have release-please authenticate with a user's Personal Access Token (PAT), performing all operations on behalf of that user. Allowing checks / GitHub Actions to run against Release Pull Requests.

It is common to have a dedicated "bot" user created for these purposes. But within paid organizations, that means an extra user seat needs to be paid for. In that case you might prefer using a GitHub App instead.

on: push
jobs:
  release-please:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
    steps:
      - uses: jimeh/release-please-manifest-action@v3
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.RELEASE_PAT_TOKEN }}

The above is equivalent to:

on: push
jobs:
  release-please:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
    steps:
      - uses: googleapis/release-please-action@v4
        id: release-please
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.RELEASE_PAT_TOKEN }}
          config-file: .github/release-please-config.json
          manifest-file: .github/.release-please-manifest.json

Note: Outputs are not included in this equivalence example.

GitHub App Authentication

This example will have release-please authenticate as a GitHub App, performing all operations on behalf of the app.

This has a few benefits compared to using the token provided by GitHub Actions or a user's personal access token:

• It allows checks / GitHub Actions to run against the Release Pull Requests raised by release-please.
• An app can be given permissions to access all repos within an organization.
• Compared to creating a separate "bot" user, paid organizations do not need to pay for an extra user seat when using an app.

Below we assume you have already setup RELEASE_BOT_APP_ID and RELEASE_BOT_PRIVATE_KEY secrets in the repository or organization.

To set the private key secret, simply copy/paste the contents of the *.pem file you get from the GitHub App's configuration page.

on: push
jobs:
  release-please:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
    steps:
      - uses: jimeh/release-please-manifest-action@v3
        with:
          app-id: ${{ secrets.RELEASE_BOT_APP_ID }}
          private-key: ${{ secrets.RELEASE_BOT_PRIVATE_KEY }}

The above is equivalent to:

on: push
jobs:
  release-please:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
    steps:
      - uses: actions/create-github-app-token@v2
        id: github-app-token
        with:
          app-id: ${{ secrets.RELEASE_BOT_APP_ID }}
          private-key: ${{ secrets.RELEASE_BOT_PRIVATE_KEY }}
      - uses: googleapis/release-please-action@v4
        id: release-please
        with:
          token: ${{ steps.github-app-token.outputs.token }}
          config-file: .github/release-please-config.json
          manifest-file: .github/.release-please-manifest.json

Note: Outputs are not included in this equivalence example.

Maintenance Releases

The target-branch-pattern input allows for dynamic targeting of different branches. This means if you, for example, specify ^(main|release-[0-9]+(\.[0-9]+)?)$ as the pattern, release-please will run against the main branch, but also against any branch named release-X or release-X.X, where X is one or more numbers.

The practical use of this looks something like this:

• The main branch is used for latest development and latest releases. Let's assume it is on version 1.5.7 right now.
• The release-1.4 branch was created from the latest 1.4.x tag, and fixes are backported to it from main.
• When main is pushed to, release-please will create a release PR to merge into main that bumps the version accordingly.
• When release-1.4 is pushed to, release-please will create a release PR against the release-1.4 branch instead of main, so a new 1.4.x release can be safely created.

The thing to be careful of when working on maintenance branches is that release- please might try and bump the minor or even major version just like it would in main depending on the commit types. This should be overridden by either doing an empty commit with a Release-As: footer, or by modifying the commit types when cherry picking.

Reference

Inputs

parameter	description	required	default
token	GitHub token used to authenticate.	false	${{ github.token }}
app-id	ID of the GitHub App to use for authentication. If set, takes precedence over token input.	false
private-key	Private key of the GitHub App (can be Base64 encoded). Required when app-id is provided.	false
target-branch	Branch to open pull release PR against. Defaults to the repository's default branch.	false
target-branch-pattern	Regular expression pattern to determine if current ref name is a target branch or not. When specified, the action will only run if the current ref name matches the pattern, and the current ref name will be used as the target branch. When not specified, the action will always run, and target the specified target-branch, or the repository's default branch if target-branch is not specified.	false
config-file	Path to config file within the project.	false	.github/release-please-config.json
manifest-file	Path to manifest file within the project.	false	.github/.release-please-manifest.json

Outputs

parameter	description
release_created	Whether or not a release was created.
upload_url	Release upload URL.
html_url	Release URL.
tag_name	Release tag name.
version	Version that was released.
major	Major version that was released.
minor	Minor version that was released.
patch	Patch version that was released.
sha	Release SHA.
pr	Pull request number.
path	Path that was released.
releases_created	Whether or not a release was created.
paths_released	Paths that were released.
id	Release ID.
name	Release name.
body	Release body.
draft	Whether or not the release is a draft.
prs_created	Whether or not a pull request was created.
pr_number	Pull request number that created the release.
prs	Pull request numbers.
raw	All outputs from release-please action as a JSON string.

License

CC0 1.0 Universal