semantic-release plugin to back-merge a release in the project's git repository.

Note: semantic-release in its core is not intended to be used with Git Flow where a stable (master/main) branch and a unstable branch (develop/next) exist. This plugin enables to use semantic-release with such branches, however it does NOT guarantee using semantic-release with Git Flow.

Especially automatic hotfix releases may not be possible as those usually lead to merge conflicts with develop that have to be resolved manually. In such cases the release workflow will fail, causing a red pipeline!

$ npm install @saithodev/semantic-release-backmerge -D

The plugin can be configured in the semantic-release configuration file:

Note: As this plugin will rebase your "develop" branch onto your "master" branch, you may not have any unstaged files in your workspace. If you do, you may set the clearWorkspace option to stash them and restore them with restoreWorkspace if needed.

{
  "plugins": [
    "@semantic-release/commit-analyzer",
    "@semantic-release/release-notes-generator",
    [
      "@saithodev/semantic-release-backmerge",
      {
        "branchName": "dev",
        "plugins": [
          [
            "@semantic-release/exec",
            {
              "successCmd": "echo 'Version in master is ${nextRelease.version}' > test.txt && git add test.txt"
            }
          ]
        ]
      }
    ]
  ]
}

If you're using Jenkins, you may need to set the username and password for Git as below (see #12):

withCredentials([usernamePassword(credentialsId: JENKINS_GIT_CREDENTIALS_ID, passwordVariable: 'GIT_PASSWORD', usernameVariable: 'GIT_USERNAME')]) {
    sh("git config credential.username ${GIT_USERNAME}")
    sh("git config credential.helper '!f() { echo password=$GIT_PASSWORD; }; f'")
}
withCredentials([usernameColonPassword(credentialsId: JENKINS_GIT_CREDENTIALS_ID, variable: 'GIT_CREDENTIALS')]) {
    nodejs(JENKINS_NODE_JS_INSTALLATION_LABEL) {
        sh("npx semantic-release")
    }
}

Branch name of the branch that should receive the back-merge. If none is given, the default value is used. You may use Lodash template variables here. The following variables are available:

Use this if you have to make changes to the files for your development branch (e.g. setting a -dev version). It uses the same plugin structure as semantic-release, but only trigger the "success" step after rebase from develop onto master is done and just before it is pushed.

Note: Please make sure that the files you changed are staged to Git workspace. Only then they will be committed.

The message for the back-merge commit is generated with Lodash template. The following variables are available:

If you want to be able to back-merge into the same branch as the branch that was being released from, enable this setting.

Note: It is recommended to include [skip ci] in the commit message to not trigger a new build. Some CI service support the [skip ci] keyword only in the subject of the message.

Setting this option will force-push the commits from back-merge onto the develop branch.

Warning: This will override commits that are not in the develop branch, so make sure that really is what you want!

Setting this option will stash all uncommitted changes from Git workspace before attempting rebase.

Setting this option will restore the stashed changes after the backmerge completed.

This setting will determine whether the develop branch should be rebased onto master or master should be merged into develop. Allowed values: rebase (default), merge

This setting will be used to determine how merge conflicts are resolved when using the merge backmerge strategy.

Allowed values: none (default), ours, theirs

none = no merge conflict resolve (process will abort on merge conflicts!) ours = apply changes from develop branch theirs = apply changes from master branch