Release It! 🚀

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

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

Use release-it for version management and publish to anywhere with its versatile configuration, a powerful plugin system, and hooks to execute any command you need to test, build, and/or publish your project.

Are you using release-it at work? Please consider sponsoring me!

Installation

Although release-it is a generic release tool, most projects use it for projects with npm packages. The recommended way to install release-it uses npm and adds some minimal configuration to get started:

npm init release-it

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

npm install -D release-it

{
  "name": "my-package",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "scripts": {
    "release": "release-it"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "release-it": "^16.1.0"
  }
}

Usage

Run release-it from the root of the project using either npm run or npx:

npm run release
npx release-it

You will be prompted to select the new version, and more prompts will follow based on your configuration.

Yarn & pnpm

Using Yarn? Please see the npm section on Yarn.
Using pnpm? Please see release-it-pnpm.

Monorepos

Using a monorepo? Please see this monorepo recipe.

Global Installation

Per-project installation as shown above is recommended, but global installs are supported as well:

From npm: npm install -g release-it
From Homebrew: brew install release-it

Containerized

Use Release It! - Containerized to run it in any environment as a standardized container without the need for a Node environment. Thanks Juan Carlos!

Videos, articles & examples

Here's a list of interesting external resources:

Video: How to use GitHub Actions & Release-It to Easily Release Your Code
Article: Monorepo Semantic Releases (repo)

Want to add yours to the list? Just open a pull request!

Configuration

Out of the box, release-it has sane defaults, and plenty of options to configure it. Most projects use a .release-it.json file in the project root, or a release-it property in package.json.

Here's a quick example .release-it.json:

{
  "$schema": "https://unpkg.com/release-it@17/schema/release-it.json",
  "git": {
    "commitMessage": "chore: release v${version}"
  },
  "github": {
    "release": true
  }
}

→ See Configuration for more details.

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. In a Continuous Integration (CI) environment, this non-interactive mode is activated automatically.

Use --only-version to use a prompt only to determine the version, and automate the rest.

Latest version

How does release-it determine the latest version?

For projects with a package.json, its version will be used (see npm to skip this).
Otherwise, release-it uses the latest Git tag to determine which version should be released.
As a last resort, 0.0.0 will be used as the latest version.

Alternatively, a plugin can be used to override this (e.g. to manage a VERSION or composer.json file):

@release-it/bumper to read from or bump the version in any file
@release-it/conventional-changelog to get a recommended bump based on commit messages
release-it-calver-plugin to use CalVer (Calendar Versioning)

Add the --release-version flag to print the next version without releasing anything.

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.

GitHub Releases

GitHub projects can have releases attached to Git tags, containing release notes and assets. There are two ways to add GitHub releases in your release-it flow:

Automated (requires a GITHUB_TOKEN)
Manual (using the GitHub web interface with pre-populated fields)

→ See GitHub Releases for more details.

GitLab Releases

GitLab projects can have releases attached to Git tags, containing release notes and assets. To automate GitLab 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.

→ 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 further customize the release notes for the GitHub or GitLab release, there's github.releaseNotes or gitlab.releaseNotes. Make sure any of these commands output the changelog to stdout. Note that release-it by default is agnostic to commit message conventions. Plugins are available for:

GitHub and GitLab Releases
auto-changelog
Conventional Changelog
Keep A Changelog

To print the changelog without releasing anything, add the --changelog flag.

→ 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 identifiers for pre-releases. An example pre-release version is 2.0.0-beta.0.

→ See Manage pre-releases for more details.

Update or re-run existing releases

Use --no-increment to not increment the last version, but update the last existing tag/version.

This may be helpful in cases where the version was already incremented. Here are a few example scenarios:

To update or publish a (draft) GitHub Release for an existing Git tag.
Publishing to npm succeeded, but pushing the Git tag to the remote failed. Then use release-it --no-increment --no-npm to skip the npm publish and try pushing the same Git tag again.

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.

Note that hooks like after:git:release will not run when either the git push failed, or when it is configured not to be executed (e.g. git.push: false). 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
branchName
releaseUrl

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, 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.

Note that arguments need to be quoted properly when used from the command line:

release-it --'hooks.after:release="echo Successfully released ${name} v${version} to ${repo.repository}."'

Using Inquirer.js inside custom hook scripts might cause issues (since release-it also uses this itself).

Dry Runs

Use --dry-run to show the interactivity and the commands it would execute.

→ See Dry Runs for more details.

Troubleshooting & debugging

With release-it --verbose (or -V), release-it prints the output of every user-defined hook.
With release-it -VV, release-it also prints the output of every internal command.
Use NODE_DEBUG=release-it:* release-it [...] to print configuration and more error details.

Use verbose: 2 in a configuration file to have the equivalent of -VV on the command line.

Plugins

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

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/keep-a-changelog	Maintain CHANGELOG.md using the Keep a Changelog standards
@release-it-plugins/lerna-changelog	Integrates lerna-changelog into the release-it pipeline
@jcamp-code/release-it-changelogen	Use @unjs/changelogen for versioning and changelog
@release-it-plugins/workspaces	Releases each of your projects configured workspaces
release-it-calver-plugin	Enables Calendar Versioning (calver) with release-it
@grupoboticario/news-fragments	An easy way to generate your changelog file
@j-ulrich/release-it-regex-bumper	Regular expression based version read/write plugin for release-it
@jcamp-code/release-it-dotnet	Use .csproj or .props file for versioning, automate NuGet publishing
release-it-pnpm	Add basic support for pnpm workspaces, integrates with bumpp and changelogithub
changesets-release-it-plugin	Combine Changesets changelog management with release-it

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

→ See all release-it plugins on npm.

→ See plugins for documentation to write plugins.

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.

Projects using release-it

AdonisJs
Axios
Cal.com
Ember CLI
Halo
hosts
js-cookie
Madge
Metalsmith
Node-Redis
React Native Paper
Readability.js
Redux
Saleor
Semantic UI React
Shepherd
Tabler + tabler-icons
Swagger (swagger-ui + swagger-editor)
Repositories that depend on release-it
GitHub search for path:**/.release-it.json

Legacy Node.js

The latest major version is v17, supporting Node.js 18 and up (as Node.js v16 is EOL). The previous major version was v16, supporting Node.js 16. Use release-it v15 for environments running Node.js v14. Also see CHANGELOG.md.

License

MIT