gitflow-workflow-action

A GitHub actions that automate the Gitflow workflow where one has a develop branch for continuous development and a main (production) branch that would automatically deploy to production. In between that, a release branch is created from develop to perform release preparation tasks before being merged to main branch. Occasionally, a hotfix branch is created from main for hot fixes.

Create "Deploy to production" PR

We can add a workflow that creates a PR for release. It will create a PR with release note that contains all the new changes in the body. The new branch would be called release/x.y.z.

This basically "freezes" the develop branch for releases. Other PRs can be merged to develop during the release branch lifetime without affecting it.

Create .github/workflows/create-release.yml

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      version:
        type: string
        required: true
        description: "Version to release"

name: Create release

jobs:
  pre_release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: gitflow-workflow-action create release
        uses: hoangvvo/gitflow-workflow-action
        with:
          develop_branch: "develop"
          main_branch: "main"
          version: ${{ inputs.version }}
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Workflows for release lifecycle

Create .github/workflows/post-release.yml

on:
  pull_request:
    types:
      - opened
      - closed
      - labeled

name: Release workflows

jobs:
  release_workflow:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: gitflow-workflow-action release workflows
        uses: hoangvvo/gitflow-workflow-action
        with:
          develop_branch: "develop"
          main_branch: "main"
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

This workflow does several things:

• Autolabel release and hotfix according to the branch name.
• If the PR is labelled release or hotfix and merged to main, it will create a release, merge back to develop branch, and trigger integrations. This is the process in Gitflow.

Note: It does not handle the deployment process. That is for your team to implement separately.

Integration: Post to Slack

It is often that an anouncement is made to a Slack channel after a release. To do so, specify SLACK_TOKEN env and slack input.

jobs:
  release_workflow:
    if: github.event.pull_request.merged == true
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: gitflow-workflow-action release workflows
        uses: hoangvvo/gitflow-workflow-action
        with:
          develop_branch: "develop"
          main_branch: "main"
          slack: >
            {
              "channel": "hoang-test",
              "username_mapping": {
                "hoangvvo": "U03B3E4UPV3"
              }
            }
        env:
          SLACK_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.SLACK_TOKEN }}

License

MIT