rel

rel

rel is a fast, interactive TUI (Terminal User Interface) CLI tool that automates periodic GitHub release processes for any organization, team or personal account.

It helps you quickly select repositories, bump versions, check branch synchronization, create release branches, and automatically open pull requests.

Features

• rel init: One-time setup wizard. Asks for your organization (or username), an optional team, repository filters, and detects your branch names from a real repository.
• rel release: Interactive release workflow. Fetches repositories, calculates the next minor version, validates that the release branch is not ahead of the development branch, creates a release/x.y.z branch, opens a PR, and writes a markdown file with release notes.
• rel sync: Post-release utility. Checks whether the release branch is ahead of the development branch and opens sync PRs to keep them up to date.
• rel profile: Switch between multiple setups (for example your company team and your personal account) without editing any files.
• Repository cache: The repository list is cached locally for 30 minutes, per profile, so repeated runs don't re-fetch it from GitHub every time.

Prerequisites

A GitHub Personal Access Token with the repo scope. Add read:org as well if you want to scope repositories to a team.

Installation

Homebrew (recommended)

brew install gozeloglu/tap/rel

This installs a prebuilt binary for macOS and Linux (Intel and Apple Silicon / arm64) and sets up shell completions automatically. Upgrading later is just brew upgrade rel.

Go

If you already have Go installed:

go install github.com/gozeloglu/rel@latest

Prebuilt binaries

Download an archive for your platform from the releases page, then:

tar -xzf rel_<version>_<os>_<arch>.tar.gz
sudo mv rel /usr/local/bin/

On macOS, a manually downloaded binary is quarantined by Gatekeeper. If you see "rel is damaged and cannot be opened", clear the attribute:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /usr/local/bin/rel

(The Homebrew installation does this for you.)

From source

git clone https://github.com/gozeloglu/rel.git
cd rel
go build -o rel

Check what you installed with:

rel version

Getting Started

Authenticate via the GH_TOKEN environment variable:

export GH_TOKEN="your_github_token_here"

Then run the setup wizard:

rel init

The wizard asks for:

1. Organization or username — validated against the API, which also detects whether it is an organization or a personal account.
2. Team slug (organizations only, optional) — limits the repository list to one team. Leave it empty to use every repository of the owner.
3. Repository filters (optional) — comma separated globs, e.g. include payment-*, exclude *-manifests.
4. Branch names — the wizard inspects one of your repositories and suggests the default branch as the release branch, plus dev/develop as the development branch when they exist.
5. Profile name — used to switch between setups later.

Usage

Start a Release

rel release

Select the repositories you want to release, confirm or edit the version numbers, and the tool handles branching and PR creation.

Key bindings in the repository list:

Sync Branches

rel sync

Opens chore: <base> to <dev> sync pull requests wherever the release branch is ahead. Profiles that use a single branch for both sides skip this step automatically.

Profiles

rel profile                # interactive picker: enter use · n new · e edit · d delete
rel profile list           # list profiles, '*' marks the active one
rel profile use <name>     # switch without the TUI
rel profile delete <name>  # remove a profile
rel release --profile <name>   # one-off override for a single run

Profiles are stored as JSON in your OS config directory (~/.config/rel/config.json on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support/rel/config.json on macOS):

{
  "current_profile": "acme-payments",
  "profiles": [
    {
      "name": "acme-payments",
      "owner": "acme",
      "owner_type": "org",
      "team": "payments",
      "base_branch": "master",
      "dev_branch": "dev",
      "include": ["payment-*"],
      "exclude": ["*-manifests"]
    }
  ]
}

Repository Cache

The repository list is cached per profile for 30 minutes and is invalidated automatically when the owner, team or filters change.

rel release --refresh   # bypass the cache and re-fetch
rel sync --refresh      # same for sync
rel cache status        # show cache age and repo count for the active profile
rel cache clear         # delete the cached list of the active profile
rel cache clear --all   # delete every cached list

Shell Completion

rel completes commands, flags and — most usefully — your profile names.

If you installed with Homebrew, completions are already set up — skip to the table below.

Otherwise, the quickest way to set it up:

rel completion install          # detects $SHELL and writes the script
rel completion install --shell zsh
rel completion install --print  # only show where the script would go

To install it manually, or to inspect the script first:

rel completion bash > ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/rel
rel completion zsh  > "${fpath[1]}/_rel"
rel completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/rel.fish
rel completion powershell | Out-String | Invoke-Expression

Restart your shell afterwards. What gets completed:

Completion never calls the GitHub API; it reads only the local config file, so it works offline and without a token.

Contributing

go test ./...
go vet ./...
gofmt -l cmd pkg main.go

To validate the release pipeline without publishing anything:

goreleaser check
goreleaser release --snapshot --clean

Cutting a release of rel itself

Note the distinction: rel release releases your repositories, while rel's own version is cut with a git tag.

git tag v0.2.0
git push origin v0.2.0

The tag triggers release.yml, which builds every platform, publishes a GitHub release and updates the Homebrew tap.

License

MIT