chore(ci): add release-please for release-automation

[zerok]

This will make the release process easier to manage by providing an auto-updated PR with a changelog. Since release-please only manipulates the changelog and creates a GitHub release, this PR also updates the release workflow to build binaries and attach them to the newly created release.

[iainlane]

As this is similar / based on what we did for wait-for-github, suggest adding ready_for_review to the types. This is because we're using the Actions bot when pushing to the PRs and so it doesn't trigger workflows. Undrafting is the trigger we use to make the release PR actually mergeable.

Are you planning to enable the merge queue? If so, you might as well add merge_group to the relevant workflows now.

[zerok]

As this is similar / based on what we did for wait-for-github, suggest adding ready_for_review to the types. This is because we're using the Actions bot when pushing to the PRs and so it doesn't trigger workflows. Undrafting is the trigger we use to make the release PR actually mergeable.

Are you planning to enable the merge queue? If so, you might as well add merge_group to the relevant workflows now.

For now I've create a custom app for this. I just need to transfer it into the correct account and install it here (done) :)

[iainlane]

This doesn't seem like a scalable approach, requiring every repository to have an app to be released using release-please. Also it adds a lot of effort into the process. What is your wider plan?

[zerok]

This doesn't seem like a scalable approach, requiring every repository to have an app to be released using release-please. Also it adds a lot of effort into the process. What is your wider plan?

An alternative would also to create a single automation app that we use for all all the OSS repos. My assumption right now is, that we will have more workflows that should be triggered by other workflow actions and so a custom token would be favourable here.

[iainlane]

Can you just quickly say what's wrong with what we're doing in wait-for-github, which doesn't require an app?

[zerok]

Can you just quickly say what's wrong with what we're doing in wait-for-github, which doesn't require an app?

The requirements are slightly different. wait-for-github does not need to run a workflow right after something was done by release-please. For Tanka we also need to generate binary files and attach them to the GitHub release. Since release-please is running at the default GitHub Actions user, that follow-up workflow won't get triggered.

Your change to use ready_for_review works if you need workflows to get triggered for the release PRs. For Tanka I don't really care about that PR but for the GitHub release that is created afterwards 🙂 Or am I just overlooking something in the wait-for-github implementation? 🙂

[iainlane]

Ah no, we don't react to the release event in that repo.

One thing you could do is look at the release_created and/or upload_url output. Assuming that works it should be possible to push the assets from the same workflow that creates the release, using softprops/action-gh-release or something like it.