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Expublish

Automate SemVer and best practices for elixir package releases.

Installation

Add :expublish to your dev dependencies in mix.exs:

{:expublish, "~> 2.3", only: [:dev]}

Create a CHANGELOG.md in the root folder of your project. It must contain a placeholder:

<!-- %% CHANGELOG_ENTRIES %% -->

Do not keep track of the release file. Put the following line in your .gitignore:

RELEASE.md

The file is deleted after every successful release.

Usage

1. Create a new RELEASE.md containing the new changelog entry:

$ echo "- changelog entry one\n- changelog entry two" > RELEASE.md

2. Run one of mix expublish.(major|minor|patch):

$ mix expublish.minor

About

Releasing a new package version can be a swift task, but doing it right usually requires some manual steps that are easy to forget or mess up. Expublish provides a mix task that guarantees a clean and functioning project state before it performs the steps required to release a new package version.

Using mix expublish guarantees:

  • A clean git working directory
  • Passing tests
  • Increased version in mix.exs
  • A new changelog entry
  • A new version git commit and tag

Expublish was built with a continuous release process in mind. It's straight forward to be used from any CI server and only requires elixir and git to be installed. Here is an example github workflow.

The mix task assumes an authenticated hex user and will try to publish and push the new package version to hex and git respectively.

This and other behavior can be changed using various options. Here are some commonly used ones:

# Go through all the task steps without any writing changes (no commit, no tag, no push, no publish):
$ mix expublish.minor --dry-run

# Do not push the new version commit and tag to git and do not publish the new package on hex:
$ mix expublish.minor --disable-push --disable-publish

# Disable the test run:
$ mix expublish.minor --disable-test

# Ignore untracked files while validating git working directory:
$ mix expublish.minor --allow-untracked

# Push the git commit to a different branch and/or remote:
$ mix expublish.minor --branch=release --remote=upstream

# Use custom commit- and no tag-prefix:
$ mix expublish.minor --tag-prefix="" --commit-prefix="Version bump"

Apart from the mix task, Expublish exposes some functions which can be used to create new releases from other elixir applications or scripts.

Note on hex authentication

Regardless of publishing to hex.pm or a self-hosted hex repository, the shell environment where mix expublish is being executed must be authenticated for the publishing step to succeed.

While publishing to hex.pm usually requires to have a valid HEX_API_TOKEN to be defined in the current environment, self-hosted repositories can use a range of various authentication methods.

Check the documentation on publishing and self-hosting to find out more.

Reference

The mix task is defined as:

mix expublish.[level] [options]

Level

LevelDescription
majorWhen making incompatible API changes.
minorWhen adding functionality in a backwards compatible manner.
patchWhen making backwards compatible bug fixes.

Options

OptionDefaultDescription
-h, --helpfalsePrint help.
-d, --dry-runfalsePerform dry run (no writes, no commits).
--allow-untrackedfalseSkip untracked files when checking git porcelain.
--disable-testfalseDisable test run.
--disable-publishfalseDisable hex publish.
--disable-pushfalseDisable git push.
--branch=string"master"Remote branch for git push.
--remote=string"origin"Remote name for git push.
--commit-prefix=string"Version release"Prefix for commit message.
--tag-prefix=string"v"Prefix for release tag.