create-release

A better GitHub action for creating releases.

How is this different from the official GitHub action @actions/create-release? The official one has several shortcomings:

1. It is not well-maintained: actions/create-release#32 (comment)
2. It has bad defaults: actions/create-release#31
3. It is written in JavaScript: Probably more of a personal preference. I like types.

I cannot promise anything in regards to the first one but I'll try and do my best :) Certainly though, I tried to make the default behaviour of this action better!

Features

• By default, release is going to reference the commit GITHUB_SHA is pointing to.
• If GITUHB_REF exists and is a tag (i.e. refs/tags/x.y.z), tag_name will be set to this tag.
• The action exposes all fields that are available on the GitHub API call.
• The action inputs are named after the API fields to avoid confusion.

Usage

name: "Create a release after pushing a tag"
on:
  push:
    tags:
      - [0-9]+.[0-9]+.[0-9]+ # matches numeric tags like 1.2.5

jobs:
  create-release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/[email protected]
    
    - name: Create a release
      uses: thomaseizinger/create-release@master
      with:
        GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}