Release It! 🚀

🚀 Generic CLI tool to automate versioning and package publishing related tasks:

• Execute test & build commands
• Bump version (in e.g. package.json)
• Git commit, tag, push
• Create release at GitHub or GitLab
• Generate changelog
• Publish to npm
• Manage pre-releases
• Hooks
• Extend with plugins
• Release from any CI/CD environment

Links

• See CHANGELOG.md for major/breaking updates, and releases for a detailed version history.
• To contribute, please read CONTRIBUTING.md first.
• Please open an issue if anything is missing or unclear in this documentation.

Table of Contents (click to expand)

• Installation
• Usage
• Configuration
• Interactive vs. CI mode
• Latest version
• Prerequisite checks
• Git
• Mercurial
• GitHub Releases
• GitLab Releases
• Changelog
• Publish to npm
• Manage pre-releases
• Hooks
• Plugins
• Distribution repository
• Metrics
• Troubleshooting & debugging
• Use release-it programmatically
• Example projects using release-it
• Resources

Installation

Although release-it is a generic release tool, installation requires npm. A package.json file is not required. The recommended way to install release-it also adds basic configuration. Answer one or two questions and it's ready:

npm init release-it

Alternatively, install it manually, and add the release script to package.json:

npm install --save-dev release-it

{
  "name": "my-package",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "scripts": {
    "release": "release-it"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "release-it": "*"
  }
}

Now you can run npm run release from the command line (any release-it arguments behind the --):

npm run release
npm run release -- minor --ci

Global usage

Use release-it in any (non-npm) project, take it for a test drive, or install it globally:

# Run release-it from anywhere (without installation)
npx release-it

# Install globally and run from anywhere
npm install --global release-it
release-it

Usage

Release a new version:

release-it

You will be prompted to select the new version, and more questions will follow based on your setup. For a "dry run" (to show the interactivity and the commands it would execute):

release-it --dry-run

Note: read-only commands are still executed ($ ...), while the rest is not (! ...):

$ git rev-parse --git-dir
.git
! git add package.json
! git commit --message="Release 0.8.3"

Configuration

Out of the box, release-it has sane defaults, and plenty of options to configure it. Put (only) the options to override in a configuration file. This is where release-it looks for configuration:

• .release-it.json
• .release-it.js (export the configuration object: module.exports = {})
• .release-it.yaml (or .yml)
• .release-it.toml
• package.json (in the release-it property)

Use --config to use another path for the configuration file. An example .release-it.json:

{
  "git": {
    "tagName": "v${version}"
  },
  "github": {
    "release": true
  }
}

Or in a release-it property in package.json:

{
  "name": "my-package",
  "devDependencies": {
    "release-it": "*"
  },
  "release-it": {
    "github": {
      "release": true
    }
  }
}

Or use YAML in .release-it.yml:

git:
  commitMessage: 'chore: release v${version}'

Or TOML in .release-it.toml:

[hooks]
"before:init" = "npm test"

Any option can also be set on the command-line, and will have highest priority. Example:

release-it minor --git.tagName='v${version}' --github.release

Boolean arguments can be negated by using the no- prefix:

release-it --no-npm.publish

Interactive vs. CI mode

By default, release-it is interactive and allows you to confirm each task before execution:

By using the --ci option, the process is fully automated without prompts. The configured tasks will be executed as demonstrated in the first animation above. On a Continuous Integration (CI) environment, this non-interactive mode is activated automatically.

Latest version

For projects with a package.json, its version will be used. Otherwise, release-it uses the latest Git tag to determine which version should be released. In any case, as a last resort, 0.0.0 will be used as the latest version.

Use --no-increment to not increment the version.

Use --npm.ignoreVersion to use the latest Git tag.

Use --no-npm (or "npm": false) to ignore and skip bumping package.json and skip npm publish altogether.

Alternatively, a plugin can be used to get the version from anywhere else (e.g. a VERSION file). Also see plugins.

Prerequisite checks

Read more about prerequisites checks release-it does to help prevent incorrect or polluted releases.

Git

Git projects are supported well by release-it, automating the tasks to stage, commit, tag and push releases to any Git remote.

→ See Git for more details.

Mercurial

An experimental Mercurial plugin is available.

GitHub Releases

The "Releases" tab on GitHub projects links to a page to store the changelog cq. release notes. To add GitHub releases in your release-it flow:

• Configure github.release: true.
• Obtain a personal access token (release-it only needs "repo" access; no "admin" or other scopes).
• Make sure the token is available as an environment variable. Example:

export GITHUB_TOKEN="f941e0..."

→ See GitHub Releases for more details.

GitLab Releases

GitLab releases work just like GitHub releases:

• Configure gitlab.release: true.
• Obtain a personal access token (release-it only needs the "api" scope).
• Make sure the token is available as an environment variable. Example:

export GITLAB_TOKEN="f941e0..."

→ See GitLab Releases for more details.

Changelog

By default, release-it generates a changelog, to show and help select a version for the new release. Additionally, this changelog serves as the release notes for the GitHub or GitLab release.

The default command is based on git log .... This setting (git.changelog) can be overridden. To customize the release notes for the GitHub or GitLab release, use github.releaseNotes or gitlab.releaseNotes. Make sure any of these commands output the changelog to stdout.

Instead of executing a shell command, a (Handlebars) template can be used to generate the changelog. See auto-changelog for more details. If your project follows conventions, such as the Angular commit guidelines, the @release-it/conventional-changelog plugin is useful.

→ See Changelog for more details.

Publish to npm

With a package.json in the current directory, release-it will let npm bump the version in package.json (and package-lock.json if present), and publish to the npm registry.

→ See Publish to npm for more details.

Manage pre-releases

With release-it, it's easy to create pre-releases: a version of your software that you want to make available, while it's not in the stable semver range yet. Often "alpha", "beta", and "rc" (release candidate) are used as identifier for pre-releases. An example pre-release version is 2.0.0-beta.0.

→ See Manage pre-releases for more details.

Hooks

Use script hooks to run shell commands at any moment during the release process (such as before:init or after:release).

The format is [prefix]:[hook] or [prefix]:[plugin]:[hook]:

part	value
prefix	before or after
plugin	version, git, npm, github, gitlab
hook	init, bump, release

Use the optional :plugin part in the middle to hook into a life cycle method exactly before or after any plugin.

The core plugins include version, git, npm, github, gitlab.

See execution order for more details on execution order of plugin lifecycle methods.

All commands can use configuration variables (like template strings). An array of commands can also be provided, they will run one after another. Some example release-it configuration:

{
  "hooks": {
    "before:init": ["npm run lint", "npm test"],
    "after:my-plugin:bump": "./bin/my-script.sh",
    "after:bump": "npm run build",
    "after:git:release": "echo After git push, before github release",
    "after:release": "echo Successfully released ${name} v${version} to ${repo.repository}."
  }
}

The variables can be found in the default configuration. Additionally, the following variables are exposed:

version
latestVersion
changelog
name
repo.remote, repo.protocol, repo.host, repo.owner, repo.repository, repo.project

All variables are available in all hooks. The only exception is that the additional variables listed above are not yet available in the init hook.

Use --verbose to log the output of the commands.

For the sake of verbosity and to not complicate matters further, the above table is not complete. The full list of hooks is actually: init, beforeBump, bump, beforeRelease, release or afterRelease. However, hooks like before:beforeRelease look weird and are usually not useful in practice.

Plugins

Since v11, release-it can be extended in many, many ways. Here are some examples:

Plugin	Description
@release-it/bumper	Read & write the version from/to any file
@release-it/conventional-changelog	Provides recommended bump, conventional-changelog, and updates CHANGELOG.md
release-it-lerna-changelog	Integrates lerna-changelog into the release-it pipeline
@grupoboticario/news-fragments	An easy way to generate your changelog file

Internally, release-it uses its own plugin architecture (for Git, GitHub, GitLab, npm).

→ See all release-it plugins on npm.

→ See plugins for more details.

Distribution repository

Some projects use a distribution repository. Generated files (such as compiled assets or documentation) can be distributed to a separate repository. Or to a separate branch, such as a gh-pages. Some examples include shim repositories and a separate packaged Angular.js repository for distribution on npm and Bower.

The dist.repo option was removed in v10, but similar setups can still be achieved. Please see the distribution repository recipe for example configurations.

Metrics

Use --disable-metrics to opt-out of sending some anonymous statistical data to Google Analytics. For details, refer to lib/metrics.js. Please consider to not opt-out: more data means more support for future development.

Troubleshooting & debugging

• With release-it --verbose (or -V), release-it prints every custom script/hook and its output.
• With release-it -VV, release-it also prints every internal command and its output.
• Prepend DEBUG=release-it:* release-it [...] to print configuration and more error details.

Use release-it programmatically

While mostly used as a CLI tool, release-it can be used as a dependency to integrate in your own scripts. See use release-it programmatically for example code.

Example projects using release-it

• react-navigation/react-navigation
• swagger-api/swagger-ui
• js-cookie/js-cookie
• StevenBlack/hosts
• react-native-community/react-native-tab-view
• callstack/linaria
• blockchain/blockchain-wallet-v4-frontend
• infor-design/enterprise
• tsqllint/tsqllint
• segmentio/typewriter
• Repositories that depend on release-it
• GitHub search for projects with .release-it.json

Resources

• semver.org
• GitHub Help (→ About Releases)
• npm Blog: Publishing what you mean to publish
• npm Documentation: package.json
• Prereleases and npm
• Glob Primer (node-glob) (release-it uses globby)