semantic-release takes care of updating the package.json’s version before publishing to npm.
By default, only the published package will contains the version, which is the only place where it is really required, but the updated package.json will not be pushed to the Git repository
However, the @semantic-release/git plugin can be used to push the updated package.json as well as other files to the Git repository.
The package.json’s version will be updated by the semantic-release command just before publishing to npm, therefore it won't be available for scripts ran before the semantic-release command.
As semantic-release uses the npm CLI to publish, all npm hook scripts will be executed. Therefore you can run your build script in the prepublishOnly hook. It will be executed after the semantic-release command update the package.json’s version and before publishing.
Yes with the dry-run options which prints to the console the next version to be published and the release notes.
If you are using a local semantic-release installation and run multiple CI jobs with different versions, the yarn install command will fail on jobs running with Node < 8 as semantic-release requires Node >= 8 and specifies it in its package.jsons engines key.
The recommended solution is to use the Yarn --ignore-engines option to install the project dependencies on the CI environment, so Yarn will ignore the semantic-release's engines key:
$ yarn install --ignore-enginesNote: Several CI services use Yarn by default if your repository contains a yarn.lock file. So you should override the install step to specify yarn install --ignore-engines.
Alternatively you can use a global semantic-release installation and make sure to install and run the semantic-release command only in a CI jobs running with Node >= 8.
If your CI environment provides nvm you can switch to Node 8 before installing and running the semantic-release command:
$ nvm install 8 && yarn install -g semantic-release && semantic-releaseSee the CI configuration recipes for more details on specific CI environments.
Yes, semantic-release is a Node CLI application but it can be used to publish any type of packages.
To publish a non-Node package (without a package.json) you would need to:
- Use a global semantic-release installation
- Set semantic-release options via CLI arguments or rc file
- Make sure your CI job executing the
semantic-releasecommand has access to Node >= 8 to execute thesemantic-releasecommand
See the CI configuration recipes for more details on specific CI environments.
Yes, semantic-release can be used with any CI service, as long as it provides:
- A way to set authentication via environment variables
- A way to guarantee that the
semantic-releasecommand is executed only after all the tests of all the jobs in the CI build pass
See the CI configuration recipes for more details on specific CI environments.
Yes, you can by explicitly setting the --no-ci CLI option option. You will also have to set the required authentication via environment variables on your local machine, for example:
$ NPM_TOKEN=<your_npm_token> GH_TOKEN=<your_github_token> npm run semantic-release --no-ciHowever this is not the recommended approach, as running unit and integration tests on an independent machine before publishing software is a crucial part of the release workflow.
Yes, with the @semantic-release/gitlab-config shareable configuration.
See the GitLab CI recipes for the CI configuration.
By default semantic-release uses the @semantic-release/github plugin to publish a GitHub release. For other Git hosted environment the @semantic-release/git and @semantic-release/changelog plugins can be used via plugins configuration.
See the @semantic-release/git @semantic-release/changelog plugins documentation for more details.
Yes, the publishing to the npm registry can be disabled with the npmPublish option of the @semantic-release/npm plugin. In addition the tarballDir option allow to generate the package tarball in order to publish it to your repository with the @semantic-release/git or to a GitHub release with the @semantic-release/github plugin.
See the @semantic-release/npm plugin documentation for more details.
Yes, all the npm configuration options are supported via the .npmrc file at the root of your repository.
See the @semantic-release/npm plugin documentation for more details.
The npm access option can be set in the .npmrc file at the root of your repository:
access=public
Or with the publishConfig.access key in your project's package.json:
{
"publishConfig": {
"access": "public"
}
}Any npm compatible registry is supported with the @semantic-release/npm plugin. For Artifactory versions prior to 5.4, the legacy authentication has to be used (with NPM_USERNAME, NPM_PASSWORD and NPM_EMAIL environment variables).
See npm registry authentication for more details.
See Artifactory - npm Registry documentation for Artifactiry configuration.
You can trigger a release by pushing to your Git repository. You deliberately cannot trigger a specific version release, because this is the whole point of semantic-release.
Yes, every commits that contains [skip release] or [release skip] in their message will be excluded from the commit analysis and won't participate in the release type determination.
It is indeed a great idea because it forces you to follow best practices. If you don’t feel comfortable releasing every feature or fix on your master you might not treat your master branch as intended.
From Understanding the GitHub Flow:
Branching is a core concept in Git, and the entire GitHub Flow is based upon it. There's only one rule: anything in the master branch is always deployable.
If you need more control over the timing of releases, see Triggering a release for different options.
This is not supported by semantic-release as it's not considered a good practice, mostly because Semantic Versioning rules applies differently to major version zero.
In early development phase when your package is not ready for production yet we recommend to publish releases on a distribution channel (for example npm’s dist-tags) or to develop on a dev branch and merge it to master periodically. See Triggering a release for more details on those solutions.
See “Introduction to SemVer” - Irina Gebauer for more details on Semantic Versioning and the recommendation to start at version 1.0.0.
semantic-release has a full unit and integration test suite that tests npm publishes against the npm-registry-couchapp.
In addition the verify conditions step verifies that all necessary conditions for proceeding with a release are met, and a new release will be performed only if all your tests pass.
semantic-release is written using the latest ECMAScript 2017 features, without transpilation which requires Node version 8 or higher.
See Node version requirement for more details and solutions.