A fully automated handy CLI utility that takes care of releasing GitHub software projects, written in 100% pure bash.

Highlights 📦🚀

It does several things that are typically required for releasing a Git repository:

• Create a release branch from your current branch (should be a feature or develop branch, following the Git branch-based workflow, and tags the release
• Enforces Semantic Versioning specification
• Avoid potential mistakes associated with manual releases, such as forgetting a step
• Create and update a changelog file automatically
• Pushes release to a remote
• Leaves merging the release branch to the development branch to the user

Table of Contents

Details

• Release Steps 👣
  • Verify + Prepare Release
  • Create Release
• Release Steps: In detail 🔎
• Requirements
• Installation
• Usage
  • Pre-requisites
  • CLI
• Options
• Example - create a release
• Contributing
• License

Release Steps 👣

The command ver-bump will execute the following steps:

Verify + Prepare Release

• Verify some commits exist
• Selects a semantic version number for the release branch & tag
• Increments / suggests a semantic version number for the release and its tag
  • Checks to see a tagged release with the chosen version already exists

Create Release

• Bump version number in package.json
• Write CHANGELOG.md
• Create release branch
• Commit changes to files made by this script
• Create a Git tag
• Push release branch + tag to remote

Release Steps: In detail 🔎

	Step	Description
Verify + Prepare Release	Process user arguments	Check and store CLI arguments supplied by user for later processing.
	Check commits	Verify some commits exist for release.
	Determine Release Version	If <package.json> doesn't exist, warn + exit. If -v option is specified, set version from that. Or, grab from version from package.json. Suggest incremented version number in the form of MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH (incrementing PATCH), as per Semver 2.0.0. Give the user the option to modify/confirm suggested version bump.
	Check branch exist	Ensure a release branch with the chosen version number doesn't already exist, if so exit.
	Check tag exists	Ensure a tag with the chosen version number doesn't exist, and exit if it does.
Create Release	Bump version number	Update semantic version number in package.json + stages changes.
	Generate changelog	Commits since the last release are automatically added to CHANGELOG.md, as well as new commit messages for files modified by this script itself. Stages changes for commit action later.
	Create release branch	Create a branch with the name release-MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH and switch to it (following the Git branch-based workflow).
	Commit changed files	Commits changes to package.json and CHANGELOG.md` (staged in the previous steps) to the release branch.
	Create Git tag	Create a Git tag referencing the new release version.
	Push	Optionally, push the release branch to origin.

Requirements

In order to use ver-bump you need:

• To host your project code in a Git repository
• Have Git installed in your environment
• Have npm and node installed

Installation

Install the script globally via npm, and use it in any local Git repository to release your project:

$ npm install -g ver-bump

Usage

Pre-requisites

• Make sure you have package.json file in your project and it contains a "version": "x.x.x" parameter
• You have done some work and have some existing commits
• You have the ability to push to your Git remote via the Git CLI

CLI

$ ver-bump [-v <version no.>] [-m <release message>] [-j <file1>] [-j <file2>].. [-n] [-p] [-b] [-h]

Options

-v <version number>     Specify a manual version number
-m <release message>    Custom release message
-f <filename.json>      Update version number inside JSON files.
                            * For multiple files, add a separate -f option for each one,
                            * For example: 
                              ./ver-bump.sh -f src/plugin/package.json -f composer.json
-p <repository alias>   Push commits to remote repository, eg `-p Origin`
-n                      Turns off automatic commit
                            * You may want to do that yourself, for example.
-b                      Don't create automatic `release-<version>` branch.
-c                      Disable updating CHANGELOG.md automatically with new commits 
                        since last release tag.
-l                      Pause enabled for amending CHANGELOG.md
-h                      Show help message.

Example - create a release

1. This will create a new branch called release-1.0.1 and a tag named `v1.0.1. Make sure that you're checking out the branch that you want to release (for example, your development branch):

   $ ver-bump

   ver-bump will output:

   Current version read from <package.json> file: 1.0.0
   
   Enter a new version number or press <enter> to use [1.0.1]: <pressed enter>
   
   ––––––
   
   ✅ Updated file <package.json> from 1.0.0 -> 1.0.1
   
   ✅ Updated [CHANGELOG.md] file
   
   Make adjustments to [CHANGELOG.md] if required now. Press <enter> to continue.
   
   Creating new release branch...
   
   ✅ Switched to branch 'release-1.0.1'
   M	CHANGELOG.md
   M	package.json
   
   Committing...
   
   ✅ [release-1.0.1 ace8b1e] Updated package.json, Updated CHANGELOG.md, Bumped 1.0.0 –> 1.0.1
   2 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
   
   ✅ Added GIT tag
   
   Push tags to <origin>? [N/y]: n
   
   ––––––
   
   ✅ Bumped 1.0.0 –> 1.0.1
   
   🏁 Done!

2. After checking out the changes in the branch and confirming them, test the release, and push the release branch to your remote if you didn't choose to push it automatically. Alternatively, use $ ver-bump -p origin to bypass the prompt and push the release branch anyway to the remote automatically.

3. If your code checks out, then open a Pull Request to merge the release branch into your develop or main branch.

   You can merge the release branch into your development branch or main branch like this, without fast-forwarding so that the branch topology is preseved as you're merging in a release branch that hasn't diverged (apart from new changes to CHANGELOG.md and package.json) and you want to ensure it's clearly evident when reading the history that a merge was performed, as opposed to a fast-forward merge, where new commits performed by the merge will become descendents of the last commit before the merge.

   A release branch shouldn't normally diverge from the branch it was created during the time ver-bump is operating, so a non-fastforward should be possible instead of a normal merge, which would simply looks like a new commit was made to the main or development branch.

   $ git checkout develop # Switch to development branch from the new release branch
   
   $ git merge --no-ff release-1.0.1 # Merge the new release branch to your development branch

Contributing

I'd love you to contribute to @jv-k/ver-bump, pull requests are welcome for submitting issues and bugs!

License

The scripts and documentation in this project are released under the MIT license.