⏫ Promote Draft Release

Promotes a draft GitHub release to a full release.

draft-release-promote-action

Usage Example

steps:
  - name: 'Promote Draft Release'
    uses: lfreleng-actions/draft-release-promote-action@main
    with:
      TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Token Permissions

The token needs the following permissions:

contents: write

Inputs

Variable Name	Required	Description
token	True	GitHub token with relevant permissions
latest	False	Mark as the latest release
tag	False	Tag of draft release to promote
name	False	Name of draft release to promote
sort_by	False	Sort by this field (see note below for valid options
sort_reverse	False	Reverse the sort order of results
dry-run	False	Perform validation without promoting the release

Valid options for sort_by input:

• createdAt
• isDraft
• isLatest
• isPrerelease
• name
• publishedAt
• tagName

Behavior

Dry Run Mode

When dry-run is true, the action will:

• Perform all validation logic
• Select the matching draft release
• Display warnings for non-matching draft releases
• Skip the actual promotion of the release
• Output what would happen

Example usage:

- name: 'Promote draft release (dry-run)'
  uses: lfreleng-actions/draft-release-promote-action@main
  with:
    token: "${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}"
    tag: "${{ github.ref_name }}"
    latest: true
    dry-run: true

Example dry-run output:

Dry-run: Would promote v0.1.3 and set as latest

The GitHub Step Summary will show:

## 🔍 Dry Run: v0.1.3
Would promote to latest release

Draft Releases

When more than one draft release exists in the repository:

• The action will promote the draft release matching the specified tag (or name)
• The action warns about other non-matching draft releases
• The warning appears in both the console output and GitHub Actions step summary

Example warning annotation:

::warning::Non-matching draft releases found: v0.1.0

When more than one non-matching draft exists, the action comma-separates them:

::warning::Non-matching draft releases found: v0.1.0, v0.9.0

Error Handling

The action provides clear error messages for common scenarios:

• GitHub token not provided (required for authentication)
• jq command not found (required for JSON processing)
• Invalid sort_by field value
• No draft releases found in the repository
• No draft release matches the specified tag or name

Implementation Details

Uses the GitHub CLI command:

gh release list --json createdAt,isDraft,isLatest,isPrerelease,name,publishedAt,tagName

Example output:

[
  {
    "createdAt": "2025-04-18T05:19:03Z",
    "isDraft": true,
    "isLatest": false,
    "isPrerelease": false,
    "name": "",
    "publishedAt": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
    "tagName": "v9.9.3"
  },
  {
    "createdAt": "2025-04-17T11:45:14Z",
    "isDraft": false,
    "isLatest": false,
    "isPrerelease": false,
    "name": "",
    "publishedAt": "2025-04-19T05:00:04Z",
    "tagName": "v9.9.0"
  }
]

This is then passed through JQ commands to sort and filter the results.

Some examples:

jq "[.[] | select(.isDraft==true)]"

jq "sort_by(.tagName)"

jq '. | reverse'