Gitlab-ci-releaser NPM

gitlab-ci-releaser

Yet another conventional GitLab releaser : find unreleased changes, bump version, commit/push changes and create a new GitLab release with notes

Installation

The setup requires Node 6+.

Add a new release stage in your .gitlab-ci.yml.
Install gitlab-ci-releaser using npm install gitlab-ci-releaser
Add the environment variables GITLAB_CI_RELEASER_NAME, GITLAB_CI_RELEASER_EMAIL and GITLAB_CI_RELEASER_TOKEN with settings of a user having Developer permissions and the permission to push to the release branch (e.g. master).
Optionally, add an environment variable NPM_TOKEN if you want to publish your packages to a npm registry.

I recommend creating and using a new user with Developer + push permissions, adding the user to the project members and generating all the environment variables using this user account (the SSH access permissions are not needed for this account).

Usage

You can use the gitlab-ci-releaser command to create releases:

$(npm bin)/gitlab-ci-releaser

To publish to npm, add the npm option:

$(npm bin)/gitlab-ci-releaser --npm

You can optionally pass the npm registry and authentication token via command line arguments:

$(npm bin)/gitlab-ci-releaser --token "<gitlab auth token>" --npmToken "<npm auth token>" --npmRegistry "http://localhost:4873/"

This being said, I strongly recommend using environment variables for this sensitive information instead of passing them as program arguments.

Here is an example of GitLab CI stage for releasing with npm publishing.

image: node:6

stages:
  - build
  - release

build:
  stage: build
  script:
    - npm install

release:
  stage: release
  before_script:
    - npm install gitlab-ci-releaser
  only:
    - master
  script:
    - $(npm bin)/gitlab-ci-releaser --npm
  when: manual

Environment variables

gitlab-ci-releaser relies on many environment variables:

Name	Type	Set by	Description	Example
`GITLAB_CI_RELEASER_NAME`	Mandatory	Admin	GitLab account username, used to create release commits	ikhemissi
`GITLAB_CI_RELEASER_EMAIL`	Mandatory	Admin	GitLab account email, used to create release commits	mail.address@example.com
`GITLAB_CI_RELEASER_TOKEN`	Mandatory	Admin	GitLab account access token, used to push commits	aBcde1234AbcD5678ef
`NPM_TOKEN`	Optional	Admin	NPM authToken. Only needed when publishing to NPM.	9febf68b-f1b7-5bd9-701a-576eba203a1f3
`NPM_REGISTRY`	Optional	Admin	NPM registry. By default, it will be fetched from npm configuration	http://private.sinopia.registry:4873/
`CI_PROJECT_URL`	Mandatory	GitLab CI	Project url	https://gitlab.com/ikhemissi/test-release-project
`CI_PROJECT_PATH`	Mandatory	GitLab CI	Project ID (user name + project name)	ikhemissi/test-release-project
`CI_BUILD_REPO`	Mandatory	GitLab CI	Project repository	https://gitlab-ci-token:xxxx@gitlab.com/ikhemissi/test-release-project.git
`CI_BUILD_REF_NAME`	Mandatory	GitLab CI	Project branch used in the build	master
`GITLAB_USER_EMAIL`	Optional	GitLab CI	Email of the user who triggered the build	mail.address@example.com
`CI_BUILD_ID`	Optional	GitLab CI	Internal GitLab build number	50

Release versions

By default, gitlab-ci-releaser uses semantic commit types and footers to determine the next release version:

if this is the first release, then the version 1.0.0 will be used to create the release
if the new changes include a commit with a breaking change (the commit message contains BREAKING CHANGE) then a major release will be created
if there is at least one feature commit (commit type = feat), then a minor release will be created
otherwise, a patch release will be created

This being said, you can force a specific release type or version as long as they conform to the semver spec using the following options:

releaseType: This option allows you to force a specific release version increment (e.g. major, minor, patch). For example, by running gitlab-ci-releaser --releaseType major we get a version 2.0.0 if the previous one was 1.5.0, and we get 4.0.0 if the previous one was 3.0.0.
releaseVersion: With this option, you can force using a specific release version (e.g. 1.9.1). For example, by running gitlab-ci-releaser --releaseVersion 1.9.1 we create a release having the version 1.9.1 even if the previous one was 2.0.0, which may lead to potential issues.

Please note that the semantic commits are also used to generate the release notes, so I don't recommend using the releaseType and releaseVersion unless your project do not use semantic commits.

If you plan to switch to semantic commits, I strongly suggest using a tool like commitizen to create your commits and have better commit messages.