AutoRel is a fast, simple, and reliable tool for automating releases based on commit messages.

It follows Conventional Commits and Semantic Versioning to do things like:

• Run pre-release tasks (tests, builds, etc.)
• Bump the version and tag based on commit messages
• Create tagged GitHub releases with changelog notes
• Publish to npm registry (or other package managers)
• Run custom scripts or commands with the new version number available as an environment variable

Like semantic-release or release-please, but faster, more reliable, and easier to use.

Supports GitHub Actions and npm (Node.js) natively. You can add custom scripts for other languages and systems (or contribute built-in support).

Use AutoRel to save time, prevent broken releases, and ship with confidence.

✅ Conventional Commit & SemVer Compliant

• 100% compliant with Conventional Commits and SemVer out of the box, including "!" for breaking changes

🔒 Safe & Reliable

• Automatic rollback on failure
• No confusing configuration files or complex setup
• Configuration validation and error handling
• Excellent test coverage

🚀 Fast & Lightweight

• Minimal dependencies and fast, concurrent execution
• Written in TypeScript with comprehensive test coverage
• No need to install or configure a separate CI/CD system
• Less broken builds and more time to focus on your code!

Read our FAQ on why you should use AutoRel and how it compares to other tools

Table of Contents

• Example Usage (CLI)
• Usage
• Commit Messages
• FAQ
• System Requirements
• Contributing
• License

Example Usage (CLI)

npx autorel@^2 --publish --run 'echo "Next version is ${NEXT_VERSION}"'

This will:

1. Bump the version based on the commit messages since the last release
2. Create a new release on GitHub with Release Notes
3. Update package.json and publish the release to NPM (does not commit the change to the repository, see below)
4. Run the command echo "Next version is ${NEXT_VERSION}"

However, we recommend you simply call npx autorel@^2 in your CI/CD pipeline (or locally) and set your configuration in the .autorel.yaml file like so:

# .autorel.yaml
publish: true
run: |
  echo "Next version is ${NEXT_VERSION}"

⚠️ If using the npx command, you may want to append the version number to prevent breaking changes in the future. You can do this by appending @^ followed by the major version number, ie. npx autorel@^2.

Usage and Configuration

See Usage and Configuration Options for more information.

Commit Messages

Commit messages are parsed to automatically determine the version bump and generate the changelog.

They must follow the Conventional Commits standard specification.

Here are some examples of commit messages and the resulting version bump (with the default configuration):

• fix: fix a bug -> 0.0.1 (patch)
• feat: add new feature -> 0.1.0 (minor)
• feat!: add breaking change -> 1.0.0 (major)

See our default configuration for more details on how commit types are mapped to version bumps and the changelog.

You can find more examples in the Conventional Commits documentation.

System Requirements

• Linux or MacOS (Windows is not officially supported)
• Node.js 14+
• npm 7+
• Git 2.13+
• Bash

Contributing

• ⭐ Star this repo if you like it!
• 🐛 Open an issue for bugs or suggestions.
• 🤝 Submit a PR to main — all tests must pass.

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License

MIT