fix(ci): only release on feat / fix / perf / refactor commits

The decide job was returning release=true for a chore: commit
because cliff.toml had no commit_parsers and filter_commits was
false, so git-cliff treated every conventional commit (chore, ci,
docs, test, style) as bump-worthy. Add explicit parsers that:

- Group feat / fix / perf / refactor under release sections.
- Skip chore / ci / docs / test / style / build entirely.
- Skip anything else as a catch-all.

Set filter_commits = true so skipped commits do not contribute to
either the changelog or git-cliff's bump calculation.

Also harden the workflow's decide step against three failure modes
of git-cliff --bumped-version observed locally:

  (a) git-cliff prints "There is nothing to bump" on stderr but
      still emits the previous tag on stdout. Detect that signal
      directly.
  (b) The proposed version equals the latest tag.
  (c) The proposed version is <= the latest tag (sort -V), which
      can happen when git-cliff's notion of "latest" excludes our
      own chore(release): bump commits.

Any of these means "skip release", with explicit log lines so it
is obvious from the run summary why nothing shipped.

Author: pepicrft

.github/workflows/release.yml

@@ -49,22 +49,48 @@ jobs:
             exit 0
           fi
 
-          NEXT="$(git-cliff --config cliff.toml --bumped-version 2>/dev/null || true)"
+          # Capture both stdout (the version string) and stderr (where
+          # git-cliff says "There is nothing to bump") in one go.
+          GC_OUT="$(git-cliff --config cliff.toml --bumped-version 2>&1 || true)"
+          NEXT="$(printf '%s\n' "$GC_OUT" | tail -n1)"
           LATEST="$(git tag --sort=-v:refname | grep -E '^v[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+$' | head -n1 || true)"
 
-          echo "Latest tag:              ${LATEST:-(none)}"
+          echo "Latest tag:               ${LATEST:-(none)}"
           echo "git-cliff bumped-version: ${NEXT:-(none)}"
 
+          # Three reasons to skip:
+          #   (a) git-cliff explicitly said nothing bumps;
+          #   (b) git-cliff returned the same string as the latest tag;
+          #   (c) git-cliff returned a version <= the latest tag (it
+          #       can do this when the "latest" tag points at a commit
+          #       whose only contents are filtered, e.g. our own
+          #       chore(release): bump commit).
+          if printf '%s\n' "$GC_OUT" | grep -q "nothing to bump"; then
+            echo "git-cliff: nothing to bump; skipping release."
+            echo "release=false" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
+            exit 0
+          fi
+
           if [[ -z "$NEXT" || "$NEXT" == "$LATEST" ]]; then
-            echo "No releasable commits since last tag; skipping."
+            echo "No new version proposed; skipping release."
             echo "release=false" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
-          else
-            VERSION="${NEXT#v}"
-            echo "Will release ${NEXT}"
-            echo "release=true" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
-            echo "version=${VERSION}" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
+            exit 0
+          fi
+
+          if [[ -n "$LATEST" ]]; then
+            HIGHEST="$(printf '%s\n%s\n' "$LATEST" "$NEXT" | sort -V | tail -n1)"
+            if [[ "$HIGHEST" == "$LATEST" ]]; then
+              echo "Proposed ${NEXT} is not greater than ${LATEST}; skipping release."
+              echo "release=false" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
+              exit 0
+            fi
           fi
 
+          VERSION="${NEXT#v}"
+          echo "Will release ${NEXT}"
+          echo "release=true" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
+          echo "version=${VERSION}" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
+
   build_nif:
     name: NIF ${{ matrix.job.target }}
     needs: decide

cliff.toml

@@ -75,8 +75,26 @@ split_commits = false
 commit_preprocessors = [
     { pattern = '\((\w+\s)?#([0-9]+)\)', replace = "" },
 ]
+# Only feat / fix / perf / refactor commits are release-worthy. Anything
+# else (chore, ci, docs, test, style, build) is filtered out so that
+# git-cliff's --bumped-version returns the current version when nothing
+# user-visible changed, and the workflow's decide job correctly skips
+# the release.
+commit_parsers = [
+    { message = "^feat",     group = "Features" },
+    { message = "^fix",      group = "Bug Fixes" },
+    { message = "^perf",     group = "Performance" },
+    { message = "^refactor", group = "Refactor" },
+    { message = "^chore",    skip  = true },
+    { message = "^ci",       skip  = true },
+    { message = "^docs?",    skip  = true },
+    { message = "^test",     skip  = true },
+    { message = "^style",    skip  = true },
+    { message = "^build",    skip  = true },
+    { message = ".*",        skip  = true },
+]
 protect_breaking_commits = false
-filter_commits = false
+filter_commits = true
 tag_pattern = "v[0-9].*"
 skip_tags = "beta|alpha"
 ignore_tags = "rc"