releaser

releaser

A CLI to standardize Git branches, commit messages, and release notes across projects. It generates consistent names from templates, validates inputs, and can publish releases to upstreams like GitHub/GitLab.

Features

• Generate and optionally checkout branches with safe names
• Create commit messages from templates and flags
• Generate release name/description from commit logs and templates
• Publish releases to upstream providers (configurable)
• Project-level overrides via path-based configuration

Requirements

• Go 1.25+
• Git installed and available in PATH

Install

Option 1: Prebuilt binaries (Releases)

Download the latest binary for your platform from the Releases page.

Example (macOS arm64):

curl -L -o releaser https://github.com/nitschmann/releaser/releases/latest/download/releaser-darwin-arm64
chmod +x releaser
sudo mv releaser /usr/local/bin/
releaser version

Example (Linux amd64):

curl -L -o releaser https://github.com/nitschmann/releaser/releases/latest/download/releaser-linux-amd64
chmod +x releaser
sudo mv releaser /usr/local/bin/
releaser version

Option 2: Install script (fetches latest release)

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nitschmann/releaser/master/scripts/install.sh)"
releaser version

Option 3: Build from source

Build locally and place the binary on your PATH:

make build            # local builds for darwin + linux
# or
make build-latest     # builds using latest tag resolution

# binaries are written to ./.build/

Alternatively, run tests and lints:

make run-tests
make lint             # or: make lint-docker

Usage (CLI)

See the generated command docs in docs/cli/ (entry file docs/cli/README.md). Common commands:

# Initialize a project config in the current git repo
releaser project init

# Generate a branch name (prints) or checkout with -c
releaser branch "Feature X" -t fix
releaser branch -c "API v2" --type feature

# Generate a commit message
releaser commit "Add metrics" -t fix

# Generate release data (name/description) and print parts
releaser release new name
releaser release new description

# Publish a release
releaser release publish

Configuration

releaser reads YAML from the following locations (first found wins):

• ./.releaser/config.yaml
• $HOME/.releaser/config.yaml
• /etc/releaser/config.yaml

The configuration is flexible and supports project-specific overrides by path. Because it is fairly detailed, the structure and examples are documented separately.

• See docs/CONFIGURATION.md for a full reference and examples.

Contributing

• Run lints and tests locally before opening PRs
• Keep templates and defaults backward compatible where possible

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See the LICENSE file for details.