Workflow to release from CI?

[flying-sheep]

I have a hybrid Rust crate / Python package: https://github.com/flying-sheep/xdot-rust

I would like to use a workflow where

1. for each commit to main that isn’t a release, a tool creates a release PR with changelog and suggested version (release-plz seems to fit the bill perfectly here)

2. when that PR is merged (creating a release commit), CI should

   • create a Git tag and a GitHub release
   • publish the crate to crates.io
   • build the Python package and publish it to PyPI

Can release-plz release be run from CI as response to release commits? Then it would be suited for this workflow. Running it locally isn’t a good idea because I also need to build and publish the Python package.

[MarcoIeni]

Hi! Have you read the docs? Especially the GitHub action section.
What you described is the main purpose of Release-plz. The fact that you missed it it's a failure in organizing the README/docs on my side.
Do you have any suggestions on how to improve in this? How can I make the docs more clear or more discoverable?

[flying-sheep]

Oh, now I see that it’s actually pretty clear. I just took a weird path:

1. I read the README
2. I checked the linked Users and didn’t see them using the release command in their CI
3. I read the CLI docs for release

I totally missed the obvious “GitHub action” section, which clearly explains that it runs both commands.

The things I can think of that could maybe have tipped me off would have been:

• Explaining the way it works in the README. I didn’t understand that the action does both things based on what commits it finds. I for some reason assumed that the action people were using just created the PR but didn’t do the release step.
• Linking the “GitHub actions” section from the README.
• Naming the chapters sth. like “Manual usage” and “CI Usage: GitHub actions”
• Linking the “GitHub actions” subsection

I think the best thing to do would be to change this part of the README:

Once the changes are merged to the main branch, you can use release-plz release to publish the new versions of the packages.

to

When changes are merged to the main branch, release-plz release will publish the new versions of the packages.

In the simplest case, just use the GitHub Action to perform either task: create a PR or publish crate & release.

or similar

[flying-sheep]

I think I was also confused because I couldn’t see a way to have it only create a tag and a release (skipping the cargo upload) and instead have a workflow run on: release that does the upload for only that release (which I could then use for Python as well)

[MarcoIeni]

Thank you for your feedback, it was really valuable!
In https://github.com/MarcoIeni/release-plz/pull/723/files I changed the readme, taking inspiration from release-please.
What do you think? :)

[flying-sheep]

It’s great! Quite clear.