Why Release Automation Matter?

1. Introduction

Release automation is a software engineering process that automates the deployment of software to testing or production environments. It is a critical component of the software development lifecycle, as it helps to ensure that software is delivered quickly, reliably, and consistently.

2. Why Release Automation Matter?

Release automation is important for a number of reasons:

• Understand what we are releasing: Release automation helps to ensure that the software being released is the correct version and that all dependencies are included.
• Reduce human error: Manual deployments are prone to human error, which can lead to costly mistakes. Release automation helps to reduce the risk of errors by automating the deployment process.
• Allow external Automation for dependencies: Release automation allows external automation tools to manage dependencies and ensure that the correct versions are included in the release like Renovate, Dependabot, etc.
• Improve consistency: Release automation helps to ensure that the deployment process is consistent across environments, which can help to reduce the risk of errors and improve the quality of the software being released.

For what kind of projects?

From my perspective and my personal experience, I would say that release automation is important for any project that is being developed by a team of developers. It helps to ensure that the software is delivered quickly, reliably, and consistently, which can help to improve the quality of the software being released. It’s not only for shared libraries or frameworks, but also for any kind of project that is being developed by a team of developers. It helps to ensure that the software is delivered quickly, reliably, and consistently, which can help to improve the quality of the software being released. It will help to track the changes and the dependencies of the project.

Before to start with a release automation

Release automation can’t be achieve manually, it requires a set of tools and processes to be implemented. Here are some of the key steps to implement release automation:

• Define the release process: The first step in implementing release automation is to define the release process. This includes identifying the steps that need to be automated, such as building the software, running tests, and deploying the software to testing or production environments.
• Select the right Continuous Deployment tool: There are a number of tools available for implementing release automation, such as Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, CircleCI, etc. It’s important to select the right tool for your project, based on your requirements and the size of your team.

Answer to this questions:

• What are the requirements of your project?
• Where are store/publish your artifacts?
• What are the dependencies of your project?
• What are the testing requirements of your project?
• What is the requirement to trigger a new release?
• How to define the next version of your project?

Semantic Versioning

Semantic versioning is a versioning scheme that specifies how version numbers are assigned and incremented. It is based on three numbers separated by dots: MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH. The MAJOR version is incremented when incompatible changes are made, the MINOR version is incremented when new features are added in a backwards-compatible manner, and the PATCH version is incremented when backwards-compatible bug fixes are made.

Semantic-release

Personaly, I’m using semantic-release to automate the versioning and the release of my projects instead to not being a big fan of node. It’s a tool that automates the versioning and the release of your project based on the commit messages. It uses semantic versioning and the conventional commits specification to determine the type of version bump and generate the release notes.

How to use it?

GitLab CI/CD

 1stages:
 2  - release
 3release:
 4    stage: release
 5    image: node:latest
 6    script:
 7        - npm install -g semantic-release
 8        - semantic-release
 9    only:
10        - master