semantic-release-github-actions-tags

A Semantic Release Plugin to create / update additional version Tags for a GitHub Action during a release, e.g. for Version v1.0.0, this plugin will push the tags v1 and v1.0, pointing them to v1.0.0.

This is a best practice for releasing GitHub Actions as also described in the GitHub Docs for creating actions - Release and maintaining actions.

This plugin is supposed to be used in conjunction with the @semantic-release/git and @semantic-release/github plugins so that both, the dist files of your action are pushed and a release is created.

Warning As this plugin is built to be used with those plugins, there is currently no verification step as this would just duplicate all required verifications (that is the existence of a GITHUB_TOKEN and the permission to git push).

Installation

npm install --save-dev semantic-release-github-actions-tags

Example Configuration

const config = {
  branches: ['main'],
  plugins: [
    '@semantic-release/commit-analyzer',
    '@semantic-release/release-notes-generator',
    ["@semantic-release/git", {
      "assets": ["dist/*.js"],
      "message": "chore(release): ${nextRelease.version} [skip ci]\n\n${nextRelease.notes}"
    }],
    '@semantic-release/github',
    'semantic-release-github-actions-tags'
  ]
};

module.exports = config;

You can use the above configuration in a GitHub workflow like this:

name: Release

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  workflow_dispatch:

permissions:
  contents: write
  issues: write
  pull-requests: write

jobs:
  release:
    name: Release
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Use Node.js 20
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: '20'
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci
      ## Build Step to Output dist/index.js
      - name: Build
        run: npm run build
      ## With the above semantic-release configuration, will create a release and push the dist/index.js file as well as all the tags required
      - name: Semantic Release
        run: npx semantic-release
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}