This GitHub Action (written in JavaScript) wraps the GitHub Release API, specifically the Create a Release endpoint, to allow you to leverage GitHub Actions to create releases.

GitHub Actions status

Create a workflow .yml file in your .github/workflows directory. An example workflow is available below. For more information, reference the GitHub Help Documentation for Creating a workflow file.

For more information on these inputs, see the API Documentation

• tag_name: The name of the tag for this release
• release_name: The name of the release
• body: Text describing the contents of the release. Optional, and not needed if using body_path.
• body_path: A file with contents describing the release. Optional, and not needed if using body.
• draft: true to create a draft (unpublished) release, false to create a published one. Default: false
• prerelease: true to identify the release as a prerelease. false to identify the release as a full release. Default false

The body_path is valuable for dynamically creating a .md within code commits and even within the Github Action steps leading up to the create-release.

For more information on these outputs, see the API Documentation for an example of what these outputs look like

• id: The release ID
• html_url: The URL users can navigate to in order to view the release. i.e. https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/releases/v1.0.0
• upload_url: The URL for uploading assets to the release, which could be used by GitHub Actions for additional uses, for example the @actions/upload-release-asset GitHub Action
• tag: The simple tag name

On every push to a tag matching the pattern v*, create a release:

on:
 push:
 # Sequence of patterns matched against refs/tags
 tags:
 - 'v*' # Push events to matching v*, i.e. v1.0, v20.15.10
name: Create Release
jobs:
 build:
 name: Create Release
 runs-on: ubuntu-latest
 steps:
 - name: Checkout code
 uses: actions/checkout@v2
 - name: Create Release
 id: create_release
 uses: actions/create-release@v1
 env:
 GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} # This token is provided by Actions, you do not need to create your own token
 with:
 tag_name: ${{ github.ref }}
 release_name: Release ${{ github.ref }}
 body: |
 Changes in this Release
 - First Change
 - Second Change
 draft: false
 prerelease: false

This will create a Release, as well as a release event, which could be handled by a third party service, or by GitHub Actions for additional uses, for example the @actions/upload-release-asset GitHub Action. This uses the GITHUB_TOKEN provided by the virtual environment, so no new token is needed.

We would love you to contribute to @actions/create-release, pull requests are welcome! Please see the CONTRIBUTING.md for more information.

The scripts and documentation in this project are released under the MIT License