Create Release PR Action

A GitHub Action that automates the creation of release pull requests between branches with automatic issue tracking.

Description

This action creates a pull request between specified branches (develop → staging or staging → production) and automatically includes references to issues that were closed in the PRs that are part of this release.

Features

• Automatically creates release pull requests between branches
• Supports both staging and production releases
• Automatically detects and includes all referenced issues (using close/fix/resolve keywords)
• Maintains a clean release history by tracking what's being deployed

Usage

name: Create Release PR
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      release_type:
        description: 'Type of release'
        required: true
        default: 'Staging Release'
        type: choice
        options:
        - 'Staging Release'
        - 'Production Release'
jobs:
  create-release-pr:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      - name: Create Release PR
        uses: typecode/create-release-pr-action@v1
        with:
          release_type: ${{ github.event.inputs.release_type }}
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Inputs

Input	Description	Required	Default
release_type	Type of release (Staging or Production)	Yes	Staging Release
github_token	GitHub token for authentication	Yes	N/A

How It Works

1. For a Staging Release, the action creates a PR from develop to staging
2. For a Production Release, the action creates a PR from staging to production
3. The action automatically identifies all PRs merged since the last release
4. It extracts issue references from these PRs (using keywords like "closes", "fixes", etc.)
5. The release PR includes all these references, providing clear tracking of what's being deployed

Versioning and Updates

This action follows semantic versioning with major version tags for easy updates.

How to Push a Minor Version Update

When you need to update the action with new features or bug fixes:

# 1. Make your changes and commit them
git add .
git commit -m "Add new feature or fix"

# 2. Create a new specific version tag
git tag -a v1.1.0 -m "Version 1.1.0 with new features"

# 3. Update the major version tag to point to your latest commit
git tag -d v1  # Delete the local tag
git tag -a v1 -m "Version 1 (points to v1.1.0)"

# 4. Push both tags
git push origin v1.1.0
git push origin v1 --force  # Force required as you're moving an existing tag

Automatic Updates

When repositories reference the action using @v1, they will automatically receive the latest minor version updates without changes to their workflow files:

uses: typecode/create-release-pr-action@v1  # Always gets latest v1.x.x