📦

action gh-release

A GitHub Action for creating GitHub Releases on Linux, Windows, and OSX virtual environments

🤸 Usage

🚥 Limit releases to pushes to tags

Typically usage of this action involves adding a step to a build that is gated pushes to git tags. You may find step.if field helpful in accomplishing this as it maximizes the resuse value of your workflow for non-tag pushes.

Below is a simple example of step.if tag gating

name: Main

on: push

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Release
        uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v1
        if: startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/tags/')
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

You can also use push config tag filter

name: Main

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - 'v*.*.*'

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Release
        uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v1
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

⬆️ Uploading release assets

You can can configure a number of options for your GitHub release and all are optional.

A common case for GitHub releases is to upload your binary after its been validated and packaged. Use the with.files input to declare a newline-delimited list of glob expressions matching the files you wish to upload to GitHub releases. If you'd like you can just list the files by name directly.

Below is an example of uploading a single asset named Release.txt

name: Main

on: push

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Build
        run: echo ${{ github.sha }} > Release.txt
      - name: Test
        run: cat Release.txt
      - name: Release
        uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v1
        if: startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/tags/')
        with:
          files: Release.txt
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Below is an example of uploading more than one asset with a GitHub release

name: Main

on: push

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Build
        run: echo ${{ github.sha }} > Release.txt
      - name: Test
        run: cat Release.txt
      - name: Release
        uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v1
        if: startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/tags/')
        with:
          files: |
            Release.txt
            LICENSE
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

⚠️ Note: Notice the | in the yaml syntax above ☝️. That let's you effectively declare a multi-line yaml string. You can learn more about multi-line yaml syntax here

📝 External release notes

Many systems exist that can help generate release notes for you. This action supports loading release notes from a path in your repository's build to allow for the flexibility of using any changelog generator for your releases, including a human 👩‍💻

name: Main

on: push

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Generate Changelog
        run: echo "# Good things have arrived" > ${{ github.workflow }}-CHANGELOG.txt
      - name: Release
        uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v1
        if: startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/tags/')
        with:
          body_path: ${{ github.workflow }}-CHANGELOG.txt
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

💅 Customizing

inputs

The following are optional as step.with keys

Name	Type	Description
body	String	Text communicating notable changes in this release
body_path	String	Path to load text communicating notable changes in this release
draft	Boolean	Indicator of whether or not this release is a draft
prerelease	Boolean	Indicator of whether or not is a prerelease
files	String	Newline-delimited globs of paths to assets to upload for release
name	String	Name of the release. defaults to tag name
tag_name	String	Name of a tag. defaults to github.ref

💡When providing a body and body_path at the same time, body_path will be attempted first, then falling back on body if the path can not be read from.

outputs

The following outputs can be accessed via ${{ steps.<step-id>.outputs }} from this action

Name	Type	Description
url	String	Github.com URL for the release

environment variables

The following are required as step.env keys

Name	Description
GITHUB_TOKEN	GITHUB_TOKEN as provided by secrets

⚠️ Note: This action was previously implemented as a docker container, limiting its use to GitHub Actions Linux virtual environments only. With recent releases, we now support cross platform usage. You'll need to remove the docker:// prefix in these versions

Doug Tangren (softprops) 2019