Automated Releases

[josephjclark]

After I've figured out manual releases, I'd like to setup automated releases on merge to main.

This will be just like the process on kit, and it goes like this:

• Merge fixes to a release branch
• When everything is ready, MANUALLY run pnpm changeset to bump versions and commit to the release branch
• Merge the release branch to main
• Target a github action at main to run npm publish

My experience in kit and adaptors confirms to me that I don't want to automate versioning. I often find myself tuning release notes or finding weird conflcits. So the versioning must be manual.

Note that changesets recommended process is more like: merge to main, create a new branch, bump versions, commit changes, open a PR. And then manually merge the version-bump PR. But I literally hate this, so we're not doing it.

The one question mark is dates on the changelog. They don't have to perfectly match the actual release date, but it would be nice.

• add a template variable {{RELEASE_DATE}} into the changelog
• before publish, replace RELEASE_DATE in the changelog with the actual date
• commit and push the change (I don't love this!)
• Publish

I really don't like the automated commit, so I may just settle for an easier life with manual dates.

[josephjclark]

There's a bunch of docs around this: https://code.visualstudio.com/api/working-with-extensions/publishing-extension#publish-an-extension