lab06.md

6 - Automate GitHub Releases

In this lab you will automate GitHub Releases using the Release Drafter action.

Duration: 15-20 minutes

References:

• About releases
• Automatically generated release notes
• GitHub Action - Release Drafter
• GITHUB_TOKEN - permissions

6.1 Automate GitHub Releases using Release Drafter GitHub Action

1. Navigate to the action repository release-drafter and read the documentation on how to use the action
2. Add a new workflow file .github/workflows/release-drafter.yml to your repository
3. Copy and paste the following content to the newly created file:

name: Release Drafter

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

# Comment out the 2 lines if the permissions for the GITHUB_TOKEN is read and write and you get an workflow runtime error
permissions:
  contents: write

jobs:
  update_release_draft:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: release-drafter/release-drafter@v5
        with:
           config-name: release-drafter.yml
           disable-autolabeler: true
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

4. Commit the changes into a new feature/lab06 branch
5. Using the same feature/lab06 branch, add a new configuration file .github/release-drafter.yml
6. Copy and paste the following content to the newly created file:

template: |
  ## What’s Changed

  $CHANGES

7. Commit the changes into the feature/lab06 branch
8. Open a new pull request and merge the feature/lab06 branch into the main branch
9. Go to Actions and see the details of your Release Drafter workflow
10. After the workflow completed, navigate to the Releases page to see your v0.1.0 draft release
11. Open the configuration file release-drafter.yml
12. Copy and paste the more complicate configuration content:

name-template: 'v$RESOLVED_VERSION 🌈'
tag-template: 'v$RESOLVED_VERSION'
categories:
  - title: '🚀 Features'
    labels:
      - 'feature'
      - 'enhancement'
  - title: '🐛 Bug Fixes'
    labels:
      - 'fix'
      - 'bugfix'
      - 'bug'
  - title: '🧰 Maintenance'
    label: 'chore'
change-template: '- $TITLE @$AUTHOR (#$NUMBER)'
change-title-escapes: '\<*_&' # You can add # and @ to disable mentions, and add ` to disable code blocks.
version-resolver:
  major:
    labels:
      - 'major'
  minor:
    labels:
      - 'minor'
  patch:
    labels:
      - 'patch'
  default: patch
template: |
  ## Changes

  $CHANGES

13. Commit the changes into a new feature/lab06 branch
14. Open a new pull request and add the enhancement label
15. Complete the pull request and merge the feature/lab06 branch into the main branch
16. Go to Actions and see the details of your Release Drafter workflow
17. After the workflow completed, navigate to the Releases page to see you v0.1.0 draft release updated
18. Edit the v0.1.0 draft release and publish your first release
19. Open the configuration file release-drafter.yml
20. Copy and paste the following content into the categories configuration:

  - title: '⬆️ Dependencies'
    collapse-after: 3
    labels:
      - 'dependencies'

21. Commit the changes into a new feature/lab06 branch
22. Open a new pull request and add the bug label
23. Complete the pull request and merge the feature/lab06 branch into the main branch
24. Go to Actions and see the details of your Release Drafter workflow
25. After the workflow completed, navigate to the Releases page to see your new v0.1.1 draft release
26. (Optional) Enable the autolabeler option of the Release Drafter and configure it to add automatically a label into a pull request. See details Autolabeler