Improve release script

[Chemaclass]

📚 Description

Improves the release script with sandbox mode, pre-flight checks, automatic rollback capabilities, and code quality refactoring for safer, more testable, and automated releases.

🔖 Changes

New Features

• Sandbox Mode (--sandbox): Test releases in an isolated temp directory with mocked git/gh commands
• Force Mode (--force): Skip all interactive confirmations for CI automation
• JSON Output (--json): Machine-readable output for CI pipelines (logs go to stderr, JSON to stdout)
• Verbose Mode (--verbose): Detailed logging for debugging
• Manual Rollback (--rollback): Restore files from the most recent backup

Safety & Resilience

• Pre-flight checks: Validates environment before any modifications
  • gh CLI installed and authenticated
  • Git working directory clean
  • On main branch
  • Network connectivity
  • Required files present
  • CHANGELOG.md has Unreleased section with content
• Automatic backup/rollback: Creates backups before modifications, auto-restores on failure via trap
• Proper exit codes: 0=success, 1=validation error, 2=execution error

Code Quality Refactoring

• DRY improvements:
  • Added release::update_file_pattern helper to consolidate version update functions
  • Added RELEASE_FILES constant to avoid repeating file lists
  • Added release::blank_line helper for consistent output formatting
• Extracted constants:
  • GITHUB_REPO_PATH and GITHUB_REPO_URL for maintainability
• Fixed inconsistencies:
  • All error exits now use $EXIT_VALIDATION_ERROR instead of hardcoded 1

📖 Usage Examples

Preview a release (dry-run)

./release.sh 0.31.0 --dry-run

Test release in sandbox (safe, isolated environment)

./release.sh 0.31.0 --sandbox

This creates a temp directory, copies the project, mocks git push and gh commands, and shows what would happen.

CI/CD automation

./release.sh 0.31.0 --force --json

Output:

{
  "status": "success",
  "version": "0.31.0",
  "current_version": "0.30.0",
  "sandbox_mode": false,
  "dry_run": false,
  "force_mode": true,
  "completed_steps": ["update_bashunit_version","update_install_version",...],
  "timestamp": "2025-12-15T10:30:00Z"
}

Rollback after a failed release

./release.sh --rollback

Full interactive release with GitHub release creation

./release.sh 0.31.0 --with-gh-release

✅ To-do list

• I updated the CHANGELOG.md to reflect the new feature or fix
• I updated the documentation to reflect the changes