Simple bash + Github Action for creating the release

simple-bash-and-github-action-for-creating-the-release-from-a-tag.md

Github action for creating the release from a tag

Create file .github/workflows/create-release-from-a-tag.yml with the content:

on:
  push:
    # Sequence of patterns matched against refs/tags
    tags:
      - 'release*' # Push events to matching release*, i.e. release-1.0, release-20.15.10, release-2020-10-28-10-26-15

name: Create Release

jobs:
  build:
    name: Create Release
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      - name: "Get latest tag"
        id: latest_tag
        run: echo "::set-output name=name::$(git tag --sort=-creatordate | head -1)"
      - name: "Get second latest tag"
        id: second_latest_tag
        run: echo "::set-output name=name::$(git tag --sort=-creatordate | head -2 | tail -1)"
      - name: "Get changelog"
        id: changelog
        run: echo "::set-output name=changelog::$(echo $(git log --pretty=format:'- %s%0A' ${{ steps.second_latest_tag.outputs.name }}..${{ steps.latest_tag.outputs.name }}))"
      - name: Create Release
        id: create_release
        uses: actions/create-release@latest
        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: ${{ github.ref }}
          body: |
            ${{ steps.changelog.outputs.changelog }}
          draft: false
          prerelease: false

This action will be triggered when you push a tag with prefix release to your github repository. And it will do:

• get the latest tag (that you've just pushed)
• get the previous latest tag
• get the change log betwen those tags
• create the release from the latest tag with the body is the change logs

bash script to create a tag from your command

Stay in your code's folder, fetch and rebase newest code of master, then run command to create a tag from latest commit of master:

datetime=$(date +'%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S')
release_name="release-${datetime}"

git tag -a ${release_name} -m ${release_name}
git push origin ${release_name}

Note:

• Currently release's name has format release-%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S. Example: release-2020-10-28-10-26-15. But you can change to what you want by edit:

    datetime=$(date +'%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S') 
    release_name="release-${datetime}"

Then github action will auto run and create the release from this tag with the change log (list of commit from previous tag -> latest tag). You just need to go to edit the release, add the break line between the commit (if needed)