Github–Create a new release–The automated version

Yesterday I showed you how to create a new release in Github manually. This was a good starting point as it introduced the different elements of a release and the options we have. Today let us automate the process of creating a release on GitHub using GitHub Actions.

Create a new release using Github Actions

• Go to Actions inside Github and click on new workflow.

• We’ll not use an existing template but instead choose to setup the workflow ourself:

• Paste the following yaml content in the editor screen. I’ll explain it afterwards…

Explanation of the Workflow

• name: This is the name of your workflow. You can name it something like "Release".

• on: Specifies the event that will trigger the workflow. In this case, it’s triggered by a push to a tag that matches the pattern v*.*.* (e.g., v1.0.0).

• jobs: This defines the job that will be run by the workflow.

• runs-on: Specifies the environment where the job will run. In this case, it uses the latest Windows environment.

• steps: This section lists the steps the job will take. I’ll focus on the actions specific for the release

  • actions/checkout@v4: Checks out the repository's code so that the workflow can access it.

  • actions/create-release@v1: This action is used to create the release. It uses the GITHUB_TOKEN secret to authenticate with GitHub. The release is named after the tag and includes a basic description. The draft and prerelease options can be set to true if you want the release to be a draft or a pre-release.

  • actions/upload-release-asset@v1: This action uploads assets (like compiled binaries, zipped files, etc.) to the release. The upload_url is provided by the previous step where the release was created.

Trigger the workflow

The workflow is set to trigger on a tag push that matches the pattern v*.*.*. Create a new tag and push it to trigger the workflow.

I can do this through the commandline:

git tag v1.0.0
git push origin v1.0.0

Or if you prefer a GUI, you can use for example Github Desktop:

• Go to the History tab to see the latest commits: 

• Right click on a commit and choose Create tag:

• Specify a tag name using the v*.*.* pattern

• Now we have one change that we should push to our remote origin:

The Github Actions workflow should pick up this change and start the release pipeline:

Once completed we have a brand new release available:

Nice!

Remark: We can further improve this by automatically generating the release notes but that is something I’ll leave for another post.