prepare-release-action

A GitHub Action that creates a release-triggering PR summarizing dependency changes since the last release tag.

Designed for projects using release-please + Renovate, where dependency updates use chore(deps): commits that don't trigger releases. This action bridges that gap with a manual workflow trigger.

Usage

name: Prepare Release

on:
    workflow_dispatch:

permissions:
    contents: write
    pull-requests: write

jobs:
    prepare-release:
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
        steps:
            - uses: actions/checkout@v6
              with:
                  fetch-depth: 0

            - uses: genu/prepare-release-action@v1
              id: prepare

Requirements

• jq must be available on the runner (included on GitHub-hosted runners)
• A package.json must exist in the repository root
• fetch-depth: 0 is required in the checkout step for full git history
• Auto-merge requires branch protection with required status checks enabled

What it does

1. Checks if there are unreleased commits since the last git tag
2. Diffs package.json dependencies between the last tag and HEAD (updated, added, and removed)
3. Creates a branch (prepare-release/<timestamp>), commits the change, and opens a PR with a summary like:

   updated @zenstackhq/orm ^3.4.2 → ^3.4.4, added new-pkg ^1.0.0, removed old-pkg
   

4. Enables auto-merge (squash) on the PR by default, so it merges once status checks pass

Inputs

Input	Default	Description
commit-type	fix	Conventional commit type for the trigger commit
commit-scope	deps	Conventional commit scope
commit-message	update dependencies	Commit message (without type/scope prefix)
auto-merge	true	Enable auto-merge on the created PR
pr-labels		Comma-separated labels to apply to the PR

Outputs

Output	Description
committed	true if a PR was created, false if there was nothing to release
pr-url	URL of the created pull request
pr-number	Number of the created pull request