13/Feb/2025 - Automatic Tag and Release in Github

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 22:41:25 +0000

This is a little Github Action’s workflow that, upon a push into your main branch, will create a new version tag, and then create a release with release notes.

It uses semantic versioning, and you can control whether it performs a patch, minor, or major release by putting a #patch, #minor, or #major note within any commit message.

A great use case for this sort of automated tagging is in Terraform modules to properly control versions like so:

module "rds-aurora" {

  source = "git@github.com:maksystem-platform/terraform-aws-rds-aurora.git?ref=v0.3.0"

  aws_region = var.aws_region
  org_name   = var.org_name
  cust_name  = var.cust_name
  env        = var.env
  ...

Just drop this into your repository’s .github/workflows/ folder, calling it something like tag-and-release.yaml, and then create the required secrets.

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

name: tag-and-release

permissions:
  contents: read

env:
  GITHUB_USER_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUBTOKEN }}
  GITHUB_USER_EMAIL: ${{ secrets.USEREMAIL }}
  GITHUB_USER_NAME: ${{ secrets.GITHUBUSER }}

jobs:
  tag-and-release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Code
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: '0'

      - name: Configure Git Credentials
        run: |
          git config --global url."https://${{ env.GITHUB_USER_TOKEN }}@github.com/".insteadOf ssh://git@github.com/
          git config --global user.email ${{ env.GITHUB_USER_EMAIL }}
          git config --global user.name ${{ env.GITHUB_USER_NAME }}

      - name: Bump version and push tag
        uses: anothrNick/github-tag-action@v1
        id: tag
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ env.GITHUB_USER_TOKEN }}
          WITH_V: true
          RELEASE_BRANCHES: main

      - name: Tag and Create a Release
        uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v2
        with:
          token: ${{ env.GITHUB_USER_TOKEN }}
          tag_name: ${{ steps.tag.outputs.new_tag }}
          generate_release_notes: true
          make_latest: true

Enjoy! And as always, you can add my RSS feed to your reader of choice and if you made it this far thanks for reading!

Chris

Release on Chris Rants at Clouds

13/Feb/2025 - Automatic Tag and Release in Github