Drafts your next release notes as pull requests are merged into master. Built with Probot.

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Usage

You can use the Release Drafter GitHub Action in a GitHub Actions Workflow by configuring a YAML-based workflow file, e.g. .github/workflows/release-drafter.yml, with the following:

name: Release Drafter

on:
  push:
    # branches to consider in the event; optional, defaults to all
    branches:
      - master
  # pull_request event is required only for autolabeler
  pull_request:
    # Only following types are handled by the action, but one can default to all as well
    types: [opened, reopened, synchronize]
  # pull_request_target event is required for autolabeler to support PRs from forks
  # pull_request_target:
  #   types: [opened, reopened, synchronize]

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  update_release_draft:
    permissions:
      # write permission is required to create a github release
      contents: write
      # write permission is required for autolabeler
      # otherwise, read permission is required at least
      pull-requests: write
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      # (Optional) GitHub Enterprise requires GHE_HOST variable set
      #- name: Set GHE_HOST
      #  run: |
      #    echo "GHE_HOST=${GITHUB_SERVER_URL##https:\/\/}" >> $GITHUB_ENV

      # Drafts your next Release notes as Pull Requests are merged into "master"
      - uses: release-drafter/release-drafter@v5
        # (Optional) specify config name to use, relative to .github/. Default: release-drafter.yml
        # with:
        #   config-name: my-config.yml
        #   disable-autolabeler: true
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

If you're unable to use GitHub Actions, you can use the Release Drafter GitHub App. Please refer to the Release Drafter GitHub App documentation for more information.

Configuration

Once you’ve added Release Drafter to your repository, it must be enabled by adding a .github/release-drafter.yml configuration file to each repository. The configuration file must reside in your default branch, no other configurations will be accepted.

Example

For example, take the following .github/release-drafter.yml file in a repository:

template: |
  ## What’s Changed

  $CHANGES

As pull requests are merged, a draft release is kept up-to-date listing the changes, ready to publish when you’re ready:

The following is a more complicated configuration, which categorises the changes into headings, and automatically suggests the next version number:

name-template: 'v$RESOLVED_VERSION 🌈'
tag-template: 'v$RESOLVED_VERSION'
categories:
  - title: '🚀 Features'
    labels:
      - 'feature'
      - 'enhancement'
  - title: '🐛 Bug Fixes'
    labels:
      - 'fix'
      - 'bugfix'
      - 'bug'
  - title: '🧰 Maintenance'
    label: 'chore'
change-template: '- $TITLE @$AUTHOR (#$NUMBER)'
change-title-escapes: '\<*_&' # You can add # and @ to disable mentions, and add ` to disable code blocks.
version-resolver:
  major:
    labels:
      - 'major'
  minor:
    labels:
      - 'minor'
  patch:
    labels:
      - 'patch'
  default: patch
template: |
  ## Changes

  $CHANGES

Configuration Options

You can configure Release Drafter using the following key in your .github/release-drafter.yml file:

Key	Required	Description
template	Required	The template for the body of the draft release. Use template variables to insert values.
header	Optional	Will be prepended to template. Use template variables to insert values.
footer	Optional	Will be appended to template. Use template variables to insert values.
category-template	Optional	The template to use for each category. Use category template variables to insert values. Default: "## $TITLE".
name-template	Optional	The template for the name of the draft release. For example: "v$NEXT_PATCH_VERSION".
tag-template	Optional	The template for the tag of the draft release. For example: "v$NEXT_PATCH_VERSION".
tag-prefix	Optional	A known prefix used to filter release tags. For matching tags, this prefix is stripped before attempting to parse the version. Default: ""
version-template	Optional	The template to use when calculating the next version number for the release. Useful for projects that don't use semantic versioning. Default: "$MAJOR.$MINOR.$PATCH"
change-template	Optional	The template to use for each merged pull request. Use change template variables to insert values. Default: "* $TITLE (#$NUMBER) @$AUTHOR".
change-title-escapes	Optional	Characters to escape in $TITLE when inserting into change-template so that they are not interpreted as Markdown format characters. Default: ""
no-changes-template	Optional	The template to use for when there’s no changes. Default: "* No changes".
references	Optional	The references to listen for configuration updates to .github/release-drafter.yml. Refer to References to learn more about this
categories	Optional	Categorize pull requests using labels. Refer to Categorize Pull Requests to learn more about this option.
exclude-labels	Optional	Exclude pull requests using labels. Refer to Exclude Pull Requests to learn more about this option.
include-labels	Optional	Include only the specified pull requests using labels. Refer to Include Pull Requests to learn more about this option.
exclude-contributors	Optional	Exclude specific usernames from the generated $CONTRIBUTORS variable. Refer to Exclude Contributors to learn more about this option.
include-pre-releases	Optional	Include pre releases as "full" releases when drafting release notes. Default: false.
no-contributors-template	Optional	The template to use for $CONTRIBUTORS when there's no contributors to list. Default: "No contributors".
replacers	Optional	Search and replace content in the generated changelog body. Refer to Replacers to learn more about this option.
sort-by	Optional	Sort changelog by merged_at or title. Can be one of: merged_at, title. Default: merged_at.
sort-direction	Optional	Sort changelog in ascending or descending order. Can be one of: ascending, descending. Default: descending.
prerelease	Optional	Mark the draft release as pre-release. Default false.
latest	Optional	Mark the release as latest. Only works for published releases. Can be one of: true, false, legacy. Default true.
version-resolver	Optional	Adjust the $RESOLVED_VERSION variable using labels. Refer to Version Resolver to learn more about this
commitish	Optional	The release target, i.e. branch or commit it should point to. Default: the ref that release-drafter runs for, e.g. refs/heads/master if configured to run on pushes to master.
filter-by-commitish	Optional	Filter previous releases to consider only those with the target matching commitish. Default: false.
include-paths	Optional	Restrict pull requests included in the release notes to only the pull requests that modified any of the paths in this array. Supports files and directories. Default: []

Release Drafter also supports Probot Config, if you want to store your configuration files in a central repository. This allows you to share configurations between projects, and create a organization-wide configuration file by creating a repository named .github with the file .github/release-drafter.yml.

Template Variables

You can use any of the following variables in your template, header and footer:

Variable	Description
$CHANGES	The markdown list of pull requests that have been merged.
$CONTRIBUTORS	A comma separated list of contributors to this release (pull request authors, commit authors, and commit committers).
$PREVIOUS_TAG	The previous releases’s tag.
$REPOSITORY	Current Repository
$OWNER	Current Repository Owner

Category Template Variables

You can use any of the following variables in category-template:

Variable	Description
$TITLE	The category title, e.g. Features.

Next Version Variables

You can use any of the following variables in your template, header, footer, name-template and tag-template:

Variable	Description
$NEXT_PATCH_VERSION	The next patch version number. For example, if the last tag or release was v1.2.3, the value would be v1.2.4. This is the most commonly used value.
$NEXT_MINOR_VERSION	The next minor version number. For example, if the last tag or release was v1.2.3, the value would be v1.3.0.
$NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION	The next major version number. For example, if the last tag or release was v1.2.3, the value would be v2.0.0.
$RESOLVED_VERSION	The next resolved version number, based on GitHub labels. Refer to Version Resolver to learn more about this.

Version Template Variables

You can use any of the following variables in version-template to format the $NEXT_{PATCH,MINOR,MAJOR}_VERSION variables:

Variable	Description
$PATCH	The patch version number.
$MINOR	The minor version number.
$MAJOR	The major version number.
$COMPLETE	The complete version string (including any prerelease info).

Version Resolver

With the version-resolver option version number incrementing can be resolved automatically based on labels of individual pull requests. Append the following to your .github/release-drafter.yml file:

version-resolver:
  major:
    labels:
      - 'major'
  minor:
    labels:
      - 'minor'
  patch:
    labels:
      - 'patch'
  default: patch

The above config controls the output of the $RESOLVED_VERSION variable.

If a pull requests is found with the label major/minor/patch, the corresponding version key will be incremented from a semantic version. The maximum out of major, minor and patch found in any of the pull requests will be used to increment the version number. If no pull requests are found with the assigned labels, the default will be assigned.

Change Template Variables

You can use any of the following variables in change-template:

Variable	Description
$NUMBER	The number of the pull request, e.g. 42.
$TITLE	The title of the pull request, e.g. Add alien technology. Any characters excluding @ and # matching change-title-escapes will be prepended with a backslash so that they will appear verbatim instead of being interpreted as markdown format characters. @s and #s if present in change-title-escapes will be appended with an HTML comment so that they don't become mentions.
$AUTHOR	The pull request author’s username, e.g. gracehopper.
$BODY	The body of the pull request e.g. Fixed spelling mistake.
$URL	The URL of the pull request e.g. https://github.com/octocat/repo/pull/42.
$BASE_REF_NAME	The base name of of the base Ref associated with the pull request e.g. master.
$HEAD_REF_NAME	The head name of the head Ref associated with the pull request e.g. my-bug-fix.

References

Note: This is only revelant for GitHub app users as references is ignored when running as GitHub action due to GitHub workflows more powerful on conditions

References takes an list and accepts strings and regex. If none are specified, we default to the repository’s default branch usually master.

references:
  - master
  - v.+

Currently matching against any ref/heads/ and ref/tags/ references behind the scene

Categorize Pull Requests

With the categories option you can categorize pull requests in release notes using labels. For example, append the following to your .github/release-drafter.yml file:

categories:
  - title: '🚀 Features'
    label: 'feature'
  - title: '🐛 Bug Fixes'
    labels:
      - 'fix'
      - 'bugfix'
      - 'bug'

Pull requests with the label "feature" or "fix" will now be grouped together:

Adding such labels to your PRs can be automated by using the embedded Autolabeler functionality (see below), PR Labeler or Probot Auto Labeler.

Optionally you can add a collapse-after entry to your category item, if the category has more than the defined collapse-after pull requests then it will show all pull requests collapsed for that category. Append the collapse-after integer to your category as following:

categories:
  - title: '⬆️ Dependencies'
    collapse-after: 3
    labels:
      - 'dependencies'

Exclude Pull Requests

With the exclude-labels option you can exclude pull requests from the release notes using labels. For example, append the following to your .github/release-drafter.yml file:

exclude-labels:
  - 'skip-changelog'

Pull requests with the label "skip-changelog" will now be excluded from the release draft.

Include Pull Requests

With the include-labels option you can specify pull requests from the release notes using labels. Only pull requests that have the configured labels will be included in the pull request. For example, append the following to your .github/release-drafter.yml file:

include-labels:
  - 'app-foo'

Pull requests with the label "app-foo" will be the only pull requests included in the release draft.

Exclude Contributors

By default, the $CONTRIBUTORS variable will contain the names or usernames of all the contributors of a release. The exclude-contributors option allows you to remove certain usernames from that list. This can be useful if don't wish to include yourself, to better highlight only the third-party contributions.

exclude-contributors:
  - 'myusername'

Replacers

You can search and replace content in the generated changelog body, using regular expressions, with the replacers option. Each replacer is applied in order.

replacers:
  - search: '/CVE-(\d{4})-(\d+)/g'
    replace: 'https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-$1-$2'
  - search: 'myname'
    replace: 'My Name'

Autolabeler

You can add automatically a label into a pull request, with the autolabeler option. Available matchers are files (glob), branch (regex), title (regex) and body (regex). Matchers are evaluated independently; the label will be set if at least one of the matchers meets the criteria.

autolabeler:
  - label: 'chore'
    files:
      - '*.md'
    branch:
      - '/docs{0,1}\/.+/'
  - label: 'bug'
    branch:
      - '/fix\/.+/'
    title:
      - '/fix/i'
  - label: 'enhancement'
    branch:
      - '/feature\/.+/'
    body:
      - '/JIRA-[0-9]{1,4}/'

Projects that don't use Semantic Versioning

If your project doesn't follow Semantic Versioning you can still use Release Drafter, but you may want to set the version-template option to customize how the $NEXT_{PATCH,MINOR,MAJOR}_VERSION environment variables are generated.

For example, if your project doesn't use patch version numbers, you can set version-template to $MAJOR.$MINOR. If the current release is version 1.0, then $NEXT_MINOR_VERSION will be 1.1.

Action Inputs

The Release Drafter GitHub Action accepts a number of optional inputs directly in your workflow configuration. These will typically override default behavior specified in your release-drafter.yml config.

Input	Description
config-name	If your workflow requires multiple release-drafter configs it be helpful to override the config-name. The config should still be located inside .github as that's where we are looking for config files.
name	The name that will be used in the GitHub release that's created or updated. This will override any name-template specified in your release-drafter.yml if defined.
tag	The tag name to be associated with the GitHub release that's created or updated. This will override any tag-template specified in your release-drafter.yml if defined.
version	The version to be associated with the GitHub release that's created or updated. This will override any version calculated by the release-drafter.
publish	A boolean indicating whether the release being created or updated should be immediately published. This may be useful if the output of a previous workflow step determines that a new version of your project has been (or will be) released, as with salsify/action-detect-and-tag-new-version.
prerelease	A boolean indicating whether the release being created or updated is a prerelease.
latest	A string indicating whether the release being created or updated should be marked as latest.
commitish	A string specifying the target branch for the release being created.
header	A string that would be added before the template body.
footer	A string that would be added after the template body.
include-paths	An array of paths used to restrict pull requests included in the release notes to only the pull requests that modified any of the paths in this array. Supports files and directories. This will override any include-paths specified in your release-drafter.yml if defined.

Action Outputs

The Release Drafter GitHub Action sets a couple of outputs which can be used as inputs to other Actions in the workflow (example).

Output	Description
id	The ID of the release that was created or updated.
name	The name of this release.
tag_name	The name of the tag associated with this release.
body	The body of the drafted release, useful if it needs to be included in files.
html_url	The URL users can navigate to in order to view the release. i.e. https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/releases/v1.0.0.
upload_url	The URL for uploading assets to the release, which could be used by GitHub Actions for additional uses, for example the @actions/upload-release-asset GitHub Action.

Developing

If you have Node v10+ installed locally, you can run the tests, and a local app, using the following commands:

# Install dependencies
yarn install

# Run the tests
yarn test

# Run the app locally
yarn test:watch

Once you've started the app, visit localhost:3000 and you'll get step-by-step instructions for installing it in your GitHub account so you can start pushing commits and testing it locally.

If you don’t have Node installed, you can use Docker Compose:

# Run the tests
docker compose run --rm app

Contributing

Third-party contributions are welcome! 🙏🏼 See CONTRIBUTING.md for step-by-step instructions.

If you need help or have a question, let me know via a GitHub issue.

Deployment

If you want to deploy your own copy of Release Drafter, follow the Probot Deployment Guide.

Releasing

Run the following command:

git checkout master && git pull && npm version [major | minor | patch]

The command does the following:

• Ensures you’re on master and don’t have local, un-commited changes
• Bumps the version number in package.json based on major, minor or patch
• Runs the postversion npm script in package.json, which:
  • Runs test
  • Pushes the tag to GitHub, which triggers GitHub Action that does the following:
    • Push GitHub app to Heroku
    • Releases NPM
    • Publish the Release Draft!