Automated Release Process

This is still a work in progress

---

Release Notes

• Release options are created throughout the sprint and stored in releases/<tag.version>.json in the format:

{
    "tag_name": "tag for this release",	
    "milestone": "milestone",
    "name": "name of the release - probably the same as the tag",
    "description": "release highlights",
    "prerelease": true|false
}  

Creating the release tag

• CI runs the various tests and goes green
• Create an annotated tag for the commit that is released
• push the tag

Generate the release notes

• The build first finds all issues in the milestone that are closed using the GitHub API
  • the milestone is in release/<tag>.json
  • GET https://api.github.com/repos/BladeRunnerJS/brjs/issues?milestone=<milestone>&state=closed
  • using the description field from release/<tag>.json as the main body of the uploaded release note, appending the completed issues

Creating the release

• Trigger the release stage in CI
  • This will calculate the latest annotate tag (the one we just made)
    • using git describe --abbrev=0
• The build checks the release doesn't already exist
  • GET https://api.github.com/repos/BladeRunnerJS/brjs/releases
  • if it does - it uses PATCH in the next step, otherwise we use POST
• The build creates the release
  • <POST|PATCH> https://api.github.com/repos/BladeRunnerJS/brjs/releases
  • The body of the request is (this is all taken from release/<tag>.json):

{
    "tag_name": "<tag name>",
    "name": "<release name>",
    "body": "<RELEASE NOTES>"
    "prerelease": true|false,
}

• store the upload_url from the response

Uploading the binary

• The build uses the upload_url field from the response previously as the URL for the zip upload