🚀🔖 Publish and Tag Action

---

⚠️ This is a heavily modified fork project of the build-and-tag-action, which looks like is stale.

A GitHub Action for properly publishing and tagging GitHub Actions (JavaScript / TypeScript, Docker, Composite)! It's designed to act on new releases and updates the tag only with necessary files. The process looks like this:

• Reads the main property in your package.json
• Reads the files property in your package.json to include additional files in your release (optional)
• Force pushes action.yml or action.yaml and additional files to the release's tag
• Force pushes to the major and minor version tag (ex: v1.0.0 -> v1.0 and v1) (optional)

📑 Table of Contents

• 🛠️ Usage
  • Prerequisites
    • JavaScript (TypeScript) Action
    • Docker Action
    • Composite Action
  • Quick Start
  • Additional configuration
• 📥 Inputs
• 📤 Outputs
• 🏗️ Project changes - fork vs source
• 😎 Motivation
• 👥 Contributing
• 🛡️ License

🛠️ Usage

Prerequisites

JavaScript (TypeScript) Action

This repository even uses it! @vercel/ncc supports TypeScript out of the box 😍 So, no need to include your dist/ in the git.

The two important things you'll need to set in your action are the main field and the build script. Here's an example of a minimal package.json that will use @vercel/ncc to compile your action to dist/index.js, and update your action.yml or action.yaml file to use the node20 runtime, and point publish-and-tag action at the compiled file.

Example package.json for your project:

{
  "name": "your-action-name",
  "main": "dist/index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "build": "npx @vercel/ncc build"
  }
  // rest of your package.json properties
}

Your package.json will probably contain a dependencies section and other fields such as license, etc...

Docker Action

⚠️ Docker Action support is experimental. Use with caution!

By default, Docker Action does not need package.json, but for publish-and-tag action is required as a kind of manifest file for publishing. The only main and files (optional) properties should be placed into package.json.

{
  "main": "docker",
  "files": [
    // Optional if your docker action uses a container registry pointer without any extra files
    "Dockerfile",
    "entrypoint.sh"
  ]
}

Composite Action

⚠️ Composite Action support is experimental. Use with caution!

By default Composite Action does not need package.json, but for publish-and-tag action is required as a kind of manifest file for publishing. The only main and files (optional) properties should be placed into package.json.

{
  "main": "composite",
  "files": [
    // Optional if your composite action does not use any files
    "main.js",
    "entrypoint.sh"
  ]
}

Quick Start

name: Publish

on:
  release:
    types: [published, edited]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          ref: ${{ github.event.release.tag_name }}

      - name: Install dependencies  # ⚠️ Not required for Composite and Docker Actions! keep only for JavaScript/TypeScript Action
        run: npm ci

      - name: Build  # ⚠️ Not required for Composite and Docker Actions! keep only for JavaScript/TypeScript Action
        run: npm run build

      - name: Publish and Tag Action
        uses: raven-actions/publish-and-tag@v2

Additional configuration

You can also use this action with other events - you'll need to specify a tag_name (see 📥 Inputs section below).

Optionally you can set the files property in your package.json with the list of the additional files that should be included in your release. Yes, it supports globs! Supports via minimatch.

In the files, you do not have to include action manifest files (action.yml / action.yaml) or file pointed into main. Both are included by default. Nothing wrong will happen if any of those files are included in the files, for example, with globs. publish-and-tag action will filter it.

{
  "name": "your-action-name",
  "main": "dist/index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "build": "npx @vercel/ncc build"
  },
  "files": [
    "dist/additional.js",
    "extras/*",
    "LICENSE",
    "README.md"
  ]
  // rest of your package.json properties
}

📥 Inputs

All inputs are optional.

Name	Type	Default	Description
tag_name	string	not set	The tag to update. If the workflow event is release, it will use the tag_name from the event payload. This option can be helpful when using this action in a workflow with other actions that generate a release.
rewrite_tags	bool	true	Should rewrite major and minor tags?
latest	bool	false	If the release is prerelease, should make the release the latest and change it to full release?
cleanup_manifest	bool	true	Should cleanup/rewrite action manifest file (action.yml / action.yaml)? It means get rid of unnecessary comments and formatting yaml to yaml standards.
git_commit_message	string	Automatic compilation	Custom git commit message.
git_author_name	string	github-actions[bot]	Custom git author name.
git_author_email	string	41898282+github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com	Custom git author email.
git_committer_name	string	github-actions[bot]	Custom git committer name.
git_committer_email	string	41898282+github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com	Custom git committer email.
github_token	string	github.token	The GitHub token used to authenticate with the GitHub API.

📤 Outputs

Name	Type	Description
commit_sha	string	The SHA of the commit that was tagged.
semver	string	The version of the tag.
semver_major	number	The major version number of the tag.
semver_minor	number	The minor version number of the tag.
semver_patch	number	The patch version number of the tag.
release_id	number	The ID of the release.
release_draft	bool	Whether the release is a draft.
release_prerelease	bool	Whether the release is a prerelease.
release_latest	bool	Whether the release is the latest release.
release_url	string	The URL of the release.

🏗️ Project changes - fork vs source

• Support for additional files to include: files property in package.js
• The glob support for additional files
• Custom git commit message support
• Custom git author/committer support
• Option to control update or not major and minor tags
• Option to cleanup action manifest file
• Option to mark the release as latest (and change from prerelease to full release)
• GitHub token is automatically injected into the action; no need to specify env explicitly
• Outputs with version, git commit sha, and basic release details
• Auto-discovery action manifest file: action.yml or action.yaml
• Docker and Composite Actions support ⚠️ Experimental. Use with caution!
• Chmod 755 for executable files used in Docker or Composite Actions (only works on .sh and .bash extensions) ⚠️ Experimental. Use with caution!
• Renamed to Publish and Tag, because the action does not perform build, but rather packaging/publishing

😎 Motivation

I am fully aligned with Jason's motivation, but I missed a few functionalities in his action - I couldn't find an alternative in the GitHub marketplace as well. I wanted to have one consistent mechanism for action publishing.

Missing features have been introduced in this forked project. See 🏗️ Project changes - fork vs source section for more details.

Jason's motivation

The guide to JavaScript Actions recommends including node_modules in your repository, and manual steps to following the versioning recommendations. There are anti-patterns there that just don't sit right with me; so we can enable the same workflow, automatically!

This Action is heavily inspired by mheap/github-action-auto-compile-node & Actions-R-Us/actions-tagger. This is more or less a combination of those two Actions, meant to work together.

👥 Contributing

Contributions to the project are welcome! Please follow Contributing Guide.

🛡️ License

This project is distributed under the terms of the MIT license.