release

Release

When to Use

• After completing a sprint and CHANGELOG [Unreleased] section is ready
• When tagging a version for production deployment
• As the final step in the commit-workflow → add-to-changelog → release pipeline

Prerequisites

• CHANGELOG.md has a populated [Unreleased] section
• All commits for this release are on the target branch (usually main)
• CI passes on the target branch

Workflow

1. Confirm CHANGELOG is Ready

# Review Unreleased changes
$changelog = Get-Content CHANGELOG.md
$unreleased = $changelog | Select-String -Pattern '\[Unreleased\]' -Context 0, 30
$unreleased.Context.PostContext

# Confirm there are actual changes
if ($unreleased -match 'Added|Changed|Fixed|Security|Removed|Deprecated') {
    Write-Host "✅ CHANGELOG has content — ready to release"
} else {
    Write-Host "⚠️  [Unreleased] section is empty — nothing to release"
}

2. Determine the Next Version

Use Semantic Versioning:

Change type	Version bump	Example
Bug fixes only	PATCH	1.2.3 → 1.2.4
New features (backwards-compatible)	MINOR	1.2.3 → 1.3.0
Breaking changes	MAJOR	1.2.3 → 2.0.0

# Get current version
$currentTag = git --no-pager describe --tags --abbrev=0 2>$null
if (-not $currentTag) { $currentTag = "v0.0.0" }
Write-Host "Current: $currentTag"

# Decide next version
$nextVersion = "1.3.0"  # Set this based on the change type above

3. Promote CHANGELOG [Unreleased] to Versioned Section

$version = $nextVersion  # e.g. "1.3.0"
$date = Get-Date -Format "yyyy-MM-dd"

$changelog = Get-Content CHANGELOG.md -Raw

# Replace [Unreleased] header with versioned section and add new empty [Unreleased]
$newContent = $changelog -replace '## \[Unreleased\]', "## [Unreleased]`n`n## [$version] - $date"
Set-Content CHANGELOG.md $newContent

# Add version comparison link at bottom (optional but recommended)
$repoUrl = git remote get-url origin -replace '\.git$', ''
$prevVersion = $currentTag -replace '^v', ''
"`n[$version]: $repoUrl/compare/v$prevVersion...v$version" | Add-Content CHANGELOG.md