Calendar Versioning Release Action

A GitHub Action that creates new releases using Calendar Versioning (CalVer) with the format YYYY.MM.PATCH.

Example Usage

---
name: Release

on:
  # Manually trigger a new release from the Actions tab
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      dry-run:
        description: Dry Run
        default: false
        required: false
        type: boolean
      draft:
        description: Draft Release
        default: false
        required: false
        type: boolean

  # Dry run on any PR to the main branch to make sure the workflow would run
  # successfully before merging
  pull_request:
    branches: ['main']

  # Automatically create releases on every push to the main branch
  push:
    branches: ['main']

jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@11bd71901bbe5b1630ceea73d27597364c9af683 # v4.2.2
        with:
          token: '${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}'

      - name: Create Release
        uses: mirceanton/[email protected]
        with:
          github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          dry-run: ${{ (inputs.dry-run || github.event_name == 'pull_request') }}
          draft: ${{ inputs.draft }}

Inputs

Input	Description	Required	Default
github-token	GitHub token with repository access	Yes	N/A
dry-run	Perform a dry run without creating an actual release	No	false
draft	Create release as a draft (unpublished).	No	false

Outputs

Output	Description
release-tag	The generated release tag (e.g., 2025.4.0)
previous-tag	The previous release tag that was used as reference
release-url	URL to the created GitHub release

How It Works

1. Retrieves the previous release tag using GitHub CLI
2. Extracts the year, month, and patch components from the previous tag
3. Compares with the current date to determine if a new month has started
4. Generates the new release tag:
   • For the same month: increments patch number by 1
   • For a new month: resets patch number to 0
5. Creates a GitHub release with the new tag and auto-generated notes
6. Provides the release URL and tag information as outputs

Versioning

This action follows - obviously - Calendar Versioning.

License

MIT