Allow for automatic nightly release

[Yamakaky]

It would be nice to have an auto-update nightly release that follows a branch, like master. I think it requires that a tag is created/updated at each push.

See https://github.com/eine/tip for a working example.

[movermeyer]

@Yamakaky I'm not sure what the request is?

---

When a release is published, if the tag doesn't yet exist, it will create it.
You can parameterize tag_name using the current date (for example).

Combined with on.schedule.cron, this solves the problem?

Roughly....

name: Daily releases

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 1 * * *'

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Compute the release tag
        run: |
          echo "release_tag=v`date '+%Y-%m-%d'`" >> $GITHUB_ENV
      - name: Create the release
        uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v1
        with:
          tag_name: ${{ env.release_tag }}
          target_commitish: main

[Yamakaky]

I assume that means a release per day? I would like to have a permanent Nightly release based on master that contains the latest binaries.

[movermeyer]

I see. Interesting. I don't think GitHub itself has support for that kind of thing, so it seems unlikely that would be built into this action.

Disclaimer: I'm not a maintainer, just a random person who happened to be wandering by.

---

One semi-hacky workaround I could imagine is adding a step to the build that looks up releases by name, deletes the "Nightly" release by ID, then does the workflow I mentioned in the previous commit.

Something like:

name: Daily releases

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 1 * * *'

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Compute the release tag
        run: |
          echo "release_tag=v`date '+%Y-%m-%d'`" >> $GITHUB_ENV
      - name: Find the previous nightly build's ID
        run:  # TODO Actually implement, https://docs.github.com/en/rest/reference/repos#list-releases
      - name: Delete the previous nightly
        run: # TODO Actually implement, https://docs.github.com/en/rest/reference/repos#delete-a-release
      - name: Create the release
        uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v1
        with:
          name: Nightly
          tag_name: ${{ env.release_tag }}
          target_commitish: main

This would still create a new tag each day, unless you set draft: true, in which case the nightly release is always a draft (might be good enough for you).

[movermeyer]

Actually, if you are able to keep it as a Draft release, you don't have to do anything special?

- name: Release
  uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v1
  with:
    draft: true
    name: Nightly
    target_commitish: main
    files: |
      release.zip

Seems to work fine with my test repo (the files are updated each time I run it)

[Yamakaky]

But then only you can see drafts I think?

[movermeyer]

You're right. TIL.

(I had always assumed that Drafts were meant to be used as pre-releases, but of course pre-releases are a separate thing)

So the best I think you can do is delete the previous nightly release each time, and deal with the daily tags that it would create.
I suppose you could add a step that finds the latest release, checks if there has been a change since that commit, and only makes the release if there has been?

Sorry that I don't have a better solution, but I'm also not sure that GitHub offers one.

[hu1buerger]

Kinda similar to #171

[maxisam]

But isn't delete tag and create tag causing issue with git? People might have a conflict if they pull down tag.