Release bot

Automate releases on Github and PyPi.

Description

This is a bot that helps maintainers deliver their software to users. It is meant to watch github repositories for release pull requests. The PR must be named in one of the following formats:

• 0.1.0 release if you want to create the "0.1.0" upstream release
• new major release, release-bot would then initiate a release from e.g. "1.2.3" to "2.0.0"
• new minor release e.g. "1.2.3" to "1.3.0"
• new patch release e.g. "1.2.3" to "1.2.4"

Release-bot now works with SemVer only. Once the PR is merged, bot will create a new Github release and a PyPi release respectively. Changelog will be pulled from root of the repository and must be named CHANGELOG.md. Changelog for the new version must begin with version heading, i.e # 0.1.0. Everything between this heading and the heading for previous version will be pulled into the changelog.

Alternatively, you can let the bot do the boring work, update __version__ variable and fill changelog with commit messages from git log. You can trigger this action by creating an issue and name it the same as you would do for a release PR, e.g. 0.1.0 release, new major release, new minor release, new patch release. All you have to do after that is merge the PR that the bot will make.

The bot works with pypa/setuptools_scm plugin. If you're using it, you don't need to care about __version__ at all. You can be also sure that the bot will make the PyPI release correctly — before it releases the software, it checks out the tag in the git repo.

A release-conf.yaml file is required. See Configuration section for details.

Once a Github release is complete, bot will upload this release to PyPI. Note that you have to setup your login details (see Requirements).

Try it locally

$ pip install release-bot

Other possible installations are through Docker, OpenShift.

First interaction with release bot may be automated releases on Github. Let's do it.

1. Create upstream repository or use existing one

This is meant to be upstream repository where new releases will be published.

Within upstream repository create release-conf.yaml file which contains info on how to release the specific project. Copy and edit release-conf.yaml.

At the end of release-conf.yaml add this line of code:

# whether to allow bot to make PRs based on issues
trigger_on_issue: true

For possible advanced setup check the documentation for an upstream repository.

2. Create conf.yaml

Create configuration file conf.yaml. You can use one from this repository. You will need to generate a Github personal access token. Recommended permissions for access token are: repo, delete_repo, user.

At the end of conf.yaml add this line of code:

# Name of the account that the github_token belongs to
# Only needed for triggering the bot on an issue.
github_username: <your_github_username>

Note: This file should not be stored in upstream repository as it contains sensitive data.

For possible advanced setup check the documentation for a private repository. Also, see requirements in case you want include PyPi releases.

3. Run release-bot

At this point, release-bot is installed. At least two configuration files are set release-conf.yaml and conf.yaml (optionally .pypirc).

Launch bot by a command: $ release-bot -c <path_to_conf.yaml> --debug You can scroll down and see debug information of running bot.

4. Make a new release

• Create an issue having 0.0.1 release as a title in your upstream repository. You can select your own version numbers.
• Wait for the bot to make a new PR based on this issue (refresh interval is set in conf.yaml).
• Once the PR is merged bot will make a new release.
• Check release page of your upstream repository at GitHub and you should see new release 0.0.1.

Since now, feel free to create releases automatically just by creating issues.

Documentation

Configuration

There are two yaml configuration files:

1. conf.yaml -- a config for the bot itself with some sensitive data (recommended to store in private repo)
2. release-conf.yaml -- stored in upstream repository and contains info on how to release the specific project.

Private repository

You need to setup a git repository, where you'll store the conf.yaml and .pypirc files. If this is not a local repository, make sure it's private so you prevent any private info leaking out. If the path to conf.yaml is not passed to bot with -c/--configuration, bot will try to find it in current working directory.

Here are the conf.yaml configuration options:

Option	Description	Required
repository_name	Name of your Github repository	Yes
repository_owner	Owner of the repository	Yes
github_token	Github personal access token	Yes
github_username	Name of the account that the github_token belongs to. Only needed for triggering the bot on an issue.	No
github_app_installation_id	Installation ID (a number) of the Github app.	No
github_app_id	ID (a number) of the Github app.	No
github_app_cert_path	Path to a certificate which Github provides as an auth mechanism for Github apps.	No
refresh_interval	Time in seconds between checks on repository. Default is 180	No
clone_url	URL used to clone your Github repository. By default, https variant is used.	No

Sample config named conf.yaml can be found in this repository.

Regarding github_token, it's usually a good idea to create a Github account for the bot (and use its Github API token) so you can keep track of what changes were made by bot and what are your own.

You can also create a Github app and use it as an authentication mechanism for the bot. For that you need to specify the three config values prefixed with github_app.

Note: If the Upstream repository is a Private Github repository, it is required to specify the SSH URL of the repository as the clone_url option in conf.yaml. This will allow the bot to authenticate using SSH, when fetching from the Upstream repository.

Upstream repository

You also have to have a release-conf.yaml file in the root of your upstream project repository. Here are possible options:

Option	Meaning	Required
changelog	List of changelog entries. If empty, changelog defaults to $version release	No
author_name	Author name for changelog. If not set, author of the merge commit is used	No
author_email	Author email for changelog. If not set, author of the merge commit is used	No
pypi	Whether to release on pypi. True by default	No
trigger_on_issue	Whether to allow bot to make PRs based on issues. False by default.	No
labels	List of labels that bot will put on issues and PRs	No

Sample config named release-conf-example.yaml can be found in this repository.

Requirements

Are specified in requirements.txt. You have to setup your PyPI login details in $HOME/.pypirc as described in PyPI documentation.

Docker image

To make it easier to run this, release-bot is available as an source-to-image builder image.

You can then create the final image like this:

$ s2i build $CONFIGURATION_REPOSITORY_URL usercont/release-bot app-name

where $CONFIGURATION_REPOSITORY_URL is link to repository with conf.yaml and .pypirc files.

To test it locally, you can the run the final image like this:

$ docker run <app-name>

once all changes, configuration files exist in GitHub and git repository contains needed files, you can try to create an issue in your GitHub repository with string like "X.Y.Z release" and you can see log like this:

$ docker run meta-test-family-bot
---> Setting up ssh key...
Agent pid 12
Identity added: ./.ssh/id_rsa (./.ssh/id_rsa)
11:47:36.212 configuration.py  DEBUG  Loaded configuration for fedora-modularity/meta-test-family
11:47:36.212 releasebot.py     INFO   release-bot v0.4.1 reporting for duty!
11:47:36.212 github.py         DEBUG  Fetching release-conf.yaml
11:47:51.636 releasebot.py     DEBUG  No merged release PR found
11:47:52.196 releasebot.py     INFO   Found new release issue with version: 0.8.4
11:47:55.578 releasebot.py     DEBUG  No more open issues found
11:47:56.098 releasebot.py     INFO   Making a new PR for release of version 0.8.5 based on an issue.
11:47:57.608 utils.py          DEBUG  ['git', 'clone', 'https://github.com/fedora-modularity/meta-test-family.git', '.']
...

OpenShift template

You can also run this bot in OpenShift using openshift-template.yml in this repository. You must set two environment variables, the $APP_NAME is the name of your release-bot deployment, and $CONFIGURATION_REPOSITORY which contains configuration for the release-bot. The contents of the repository are described above. Note that if you use private repository (which you absolutely should), you will need to set up a new OpenShift secret named release-bot-secret to authenticate. It can be a ssh private key that you can use to access the repository (for GitHub see deploy keys). Here's an guide on how to do that in OpenShift GUI, or another guide that uses oc commandline tool.

By default, the release-bot builder image won't update itself when a new version of this image is pushed to docker hub. You can change it by uncommenting lines with #importPolicy: and #scheduled: true in openshift-template.yml. Then the image will be pulled on a new release.

Contributing

If you are interested in making contribution to release-bot project, please read Contribution guide for more information.