Get Release Version (GitHub Action)

A GitHub Action to determine the next version by checking the commit history for Conventional Commits with support for hotfix changes.

Usage

- name: Clone repository
  uses: actions/checkout@v4
  with:
    fetch-depth: 0

- uses: wemogy/get-release-version-action@v4.3.2
  id: get-release-version
  with:
    prefix: "v"
    suffix: "NONE"
    reference-version-suffix: "NONE"
    bumping-suffix: "hotfix"
    only-bump-suffix: "false"
    create-tag: "true"
    git-username: "Your User"
    git-email: "you@example.com"
    mode: "semantic"

- run: echo ${{ steps.get-release-version.outputs.version }}
- run: echo ${{ steps.get-release-version.outputs.version-name }}
- run: echo ${{ steps.get-release-version.outputs.previous-version }}
- run: echo ${{ steps.get-release-version.outputs.previous-version-name }}
- run: echo ${{ steps.get-release-version.outputs.tag-created }}

Inputs

Input	Required	Default	Description
prefix	false	v	The prefix that should be prepended to the version.
suffix	false	NONE	The suffix that should be appended to the version (e.g. beta). Use NONE for no suffix.
reference-version-suffix	false	NONE	The suffix that should be replaced with the value in suffix (e.g. pre). Use NONE for no suffix.
bumping-suffix	false	hotfix	The suffix to append to the version (or increment if it already exists) if only-bump-suffix is true.
only-bump-suffix	false	false	Bump the bumping-suffix instead of the version if changes were detected.
create-tag	false	true	Create a git tag for the version and push it if a remote is configured.
git-username	If create-tag is true	NONE	The username for creating the (annotated) git tag. Use NONE for no username.
git-email	If create-tag is true	NONE	The email address for creating the (annotated) git tag. Use NONE for no email address.
mode	false	semantic	The mode to use for determining the next version. Possible values: semantic, hash-based.

Outputs

Output	Description
version	The next version, without the prefix.
version-name	The next version, with the prefix.
previous-version	The previous version, without the prefix.
previous-version-name	The previous version, with the prefix.
tag-created	If any relevant changes got detected and a tag got created.

FAQ

The version stopped incrementing — what's wrong?

If the version number stays the same, please check the following:

• The GitHub workflow must use actions/checkout@4 with fetch-depth: 0. This ensures that the commit and tag history is fetched, which is necessary for determining the change level and the last version.
• At least one commit message must follow the Conventional Commits specification and must not be of the level chore.
• Remove all tags from the repository that do not have the Verified badge.

Why did we implement sematic release by ourselves?

We had this issue, which finally led to the decision to implement the semantic release by ourselves:

Release branch of stage (e.g. release-beta) is always creating hotfix versions.

How to reproduce

1. Ensure that all branches (main, release, release-beta) are in sync
2. Create a new commit fix: hotfix on the main branch
3. Push the commit to the main branch
4. Cherry-pick the commit to the release-beta branch
5. After a bit of waiting, merge from main into release ⇒ the correct version gets created
6. Merge from release into release-beta ⇒ a hotfix version gets created (this could be because the cherry-pick duplicated the commit: https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/cherry-pick#:~:text=git%20cherry%2Dpick%20is%20a,be%20useful%20for%20undoing%20changes.)

• I can confirm by checking the history that there is a duplicated commit in the release-beta branch
• For me, the merge commit which is tagged to the newest version is the newest commit in the release-beta branch ⇒ I don't understand why the duplicated commit is an issue

What causes the issue?

1. Semantic-Release is checking the commit history for the latest full release version
   • Prints something like algorithm.next_version: The last full release was 0.1.2, tagged as 'v0.1.2'
2. Semantic-Release is fetching all commits that are reachable from the current branch, but not from the latest full release version
   • Using git rev-list v0.1.2... -- to get the commits
3. The unreachable commits are basically in this case two types:
   1. The merge commits in the release-beta branch
   2. The cherry-picked commit in the release-beta branch

⇒ The issue is that the unreachable commits are from all time, not only from the last full release version.

Development

This project uses poetry for dependency management.

Install dependencies

For development:

# working directory: repository root
poetry install --with dev

For production:

# working directory: repository root
poetry install --without dev

Add or update dependencies

# working directory: repository root
poetry add <dependency>[@^<version>] [--group dev]
poetry update [<dependency>[@^<version>]]

Some dependencies are missing type definitions (stubs) for mypy. If mypy fails with a message that a module is installed but missing library stubs or py.typed marker, the stubs must be created for the packages. These stubs can be generated by mypy, but the output code is not perfect. This means that after each run of the generator, the stubs of the code used by our code must be checked and adjusted.

For a newly installed package, add a new command to the code block below and run it. Then check the functions and classes used by our code.

For an updated package, run the command for the updated package only if the update has changed some of the functions or classes used by our code. Again, check those functions and classes after you run the command.

# working directory: repository root
# command template: stubgen -o .mypy_stubs -p <package_name>
stubgen -o .mypy_stubs -p semantic_release

Activate the poetry shell

# working directory: repository root
poetry shell

Run the script

# with poetry shell
# working directory: src
python3 app.py [...args]

Run the Docker container

Build:

# working directory: repository root
docker build -t get-release-version-action:local -f Dockerfile .

Run:

# working directory: repository root
docker run get-release-version-action:local

Run the tests

# with poetry shell
# working directory: tests
pytest tests

The tests are isolated from the actual source code, because they are supposed to test the same interface that the action also uses. This means that the tests must not import anything from the source code or vice versa.

Run linting and type checking

This project uses pylint and flake8 for linting / code style checking and mypy for static type checking.

All tools are configured in the pyproject.toml.

# with poetry shell
# working directory: repository root
pylint get_release_version_action
flake8 get_release_version_action
mypy get_release_version_action

pylint tests/e2e
flake8 tests
mypy tests

Important

Source code and tests are isolated from each other and also need to be checked isolated from each other to prevent false warnings.