Automated Releases with release-plz

release-plz automates version bumping and release creation based on conventional commits. This is the recommended way to manage releases.

How It Works

  1. Push commits to main using conventional commit messages
  2. release-plz creates a PR with version bumps and changelog updates
  3. Merge the PR to trigger a release
  4. release-plz creates a GitHub release
  5. The release triggers the build workflow, which compiles and uploads binaries

Setup

Install release-plz

cargo install release-plz

Initialize

Run this in your repository:

release-plz init

This command:

  • Creates .github/workflows/release-plz.yml
  • Sets up necessary GitHub repository secrets
  • Configures the release workflow

Conventional Commits

release-plz uses conventional commits to determine version bumps:

Commit prefixVersion bumpExample
fix:Patch (0.1.0 → 0.1.1)fix: handle empty input
feat:Minor (0.1.0 → 0.2.0)feat: add new command
feat!: or BREAKING CHANGE:Major (0.1.0 → 1.0.0)feat!: change API

Other prefixes like docs:, chore:, refactor: don't trigger version bumps but are included in the changelog.

Complete Example

With both workflows set up, your release process is:

  1. Make changes with conventional commits:

    git commit -m "feat: add caching support"
git push origin main

  2. release-plz opens a PR bumping version to 0.2.0

  3. Merge the PR

  4. release-plz creates a GitHub release "v0.2.0"

  5. The release triggers the build workflow

  6. Binaries and extension.json are uploaded to the release