DevOps: Automating Semantic Versioning using GitHub Actions

What are GitHub Actions?

With GitHub Actions you can automate, modify and carry out software development processes in your repository. To do any job, including continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), you can find, create and share actions. You can then combine your efforts into a unique workflow.

In other words:

• GitHub Actions makes it easy to automate all your software workflows.
• GitHub actions let you build, test and deploy your code right from GitHub.
• You can automate other applications via GitHub Actions by integrating them with GitHub.

What is Semantic Versioning?

This procedure is intended to make it easier to automatically assign version numbers during a build while publishing versions that only increase by one value per release. To do this, the following version number is calculated, together with a commit increment that shows how many commits were made for this version. To identify the type of version change the following version reflects, examine the commit messages. The sort of modification the upcoming version will represent will change if the title message for the pull request uses the terms major, minor or patch for the major, minor or patch version, respectively.

What is the background of automatic Semantic Versioning?

The fundamental drawback of the previous systems is that they lacked descriptiveness. It might be challenging for a user to determine whether non-breaking changes have been included in a new version when comparing various versions that come after an incremented version. The new version’s purpose cannot be inferred only from its version number.

You can make version numbers more evocative by using Semantic Versioning. The format of a Semantic Version number is MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH.

The different sections are numbers. We increment:

• The MAJOR part by passing the major on after successfully merging the Pull request
• The MINOR part by passing the minor on after successfully merging the Pull request
• The PATCH part by passing the patch on after successfully merging the Pull request

Make a GitHub Action workflow directory such as -> .github/workflows/increment.yaml

name: Creation of Release Version
on:
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]
    types:
      - closed

jobs:
  build:
    name: Create Release  
    if: github.event.pull_request.merged == true
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Taking the Latest Release Tag number
        id: releaseVersion
        run: |
          owner="<owner`s name>"
          repo="<repo`s name>"
          release_json=$(curl https://api.github.com/repos/$owner/$repo/releases)
          Release_tag=$(echo "$release_json" | jq -r '.[0].tag_name')
          echo "Release_tag: Latest Tag is : $Release_tag"
          echo ::set-output name=Release_tag::"$Release_tag"
          
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        
      - name: Bumping Major Index
        id: bump_version_major
        if: contains(github.event.pull_request.title, 'major')
        uses: christian-draeger/increment-semantic-version@1.0.2
        with:
          current-version: ${{ steps.releaseVersion.outputs.Release_tag }}
          version-fragment: 'major'
                    
      - name: Bumping Minor Index
        id: bump_version_minor
        if: contains(github.event.pull_request.title, 'minor')
        uses: christian-draeger/increment-semantic-version@1.0.2
        with:
          current-version: ${{ steps.releaseVersion.outputs.Release_tag }}
          version-fragment: 'feature'
          
      - name: Bumping Patch Index 
        id: bump_version_patch
        if: contains(github.event.pull_request.title, 'patch')
        uses: christian-draeger/increment-semantic-version@1.0.2
        with:
          current-version: ${{ steps.releaseVersion.outputs.Release_tag }}
          version-fragment: 'bug'
          
      - name: Create release version for bump_version_major
        env: 
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        run: |
          owner="<owner`s name>"
          repo="<repo`s name>"
          curl \
            -X POST \
            -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \
            -H "Authorization: token ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}" \
             https://api.github.com/repos/$owner/$repo/releases \
            -d '{"tag_name":"${{ steps.bump_version_major.outputs.next-version }}","target_commitish":"master","name":"${{ steps.bump_version_major.outputs.next-version }}","body":"Description of the release","draft":false,"prerelease":false,"generate_release_notes":false}'
          curl \
            -X POST \
            -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \
            -H "Authorization: token ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}" \
             https://api.github.com/repos/$owner/$repo/releases \
            -d '{"tag_name":"${{ steps.bump_version_minor.outputs.next-version }}","target_commitish":"master","name":"${{ steps.bump_version_minor.outputs.next-version }}","body":"Description of the release","draft":false,"prerelease":false,"generate_release_notes":false}'
          curl \
            -X POST \
            -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \
            -H "Authorization: token ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}" \
             https://api.github.com/repos/$owner/$repo/releases \
            -d '{"tag_name":"${{ steps.bump_version_patch.outputs.next-version }}","target_commitish":"master","name":"${{ steps.bump_version_patch.outputs.next-version }}","body":"Description of the release","draft":false,"prerelease":false,"generate_release_notes":false}'

Output

— By Pulkit Bindal