Update Version Tags Action

Update Version Tags on Push or Release for Semantic Versions or Custom Tags.

Zero configuration to maintain both major vN -> vN.x.x and minor vN.N -> vN.N.x tags.

This is useful if you want to automatically update additional tags, to point to your pushed/released tag. For example, many GitHub Actions maintain a vN and vN.N tag that points to the latest release of the vN.x.x branch.

To get started, create or update your workflow file and review the permissions.

Workflow

Add the step to an existing workflow or create a new one.

Existing Workflow

- name: "Update Tags"
  uses: cssnr/update-version-tags-action@v2

New Workflow

name: "Release"
on:
  release:
    types: [published]
jobs:
  release:
    name: "Release"
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    timeout-minutes: 5
    permissions:
      contents: write
    steps:
      - name: "Update Tags"
        uses: cssnr/update-version-tags-action@v2

Hash Copied to Clipboard

Check out the Rolling Tags for more tag options.

Make sure to add the required Permissions.

See the Inputs Documentation for additional options and default values.

Permissions

This action requires the following permissions:

permissions:
  contents: write

Permissions documentation for Workflows and Actions.

Rolling Back

To roll back or manually update tags, copy this workflow: tags.yaml

To rollback tags you must use a PAT with the repo and workflow permissions. The target sha will be parsed from the target tag provided in the UI.

For example, if you releases v1.0.1 but wanted to roll back to v1.0.0. You would run the workflow with tag v1.0.0 it would update the v1 and v1.0 tags (or what ever tags you manually specify) to point back to the sha of tag v1.0.0.

View Rollback Workflow

name: "Tags"

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      tag:
        description: "Target Tag"
        required: true

jobs:
  tags:
    name: "Tags"
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    timeout-minutes: 5
    permissions:
      contents: write

    steps:
      - name: "Update Tags"
        uses: cssnr/update-version-tags-action@v2
        with:
          tag: ${{ inputs.tag }}
          token: ${{ secrets.GH_PAT }}

Rolling Tags

The following rolling tags are maintained to improve stability across updates.

Version Tag	Rolling	Bugs	Feat.	Name	Target	Example
	✅	✅	✅	Major	vN.x.x	vN
	✅	✅	❌	Minor	vN.N.x	vN.N
	❌	❌	❌	Micro	vN.N.N	vN.N.N

You can view the release notes for each version on the releases page.

The Major tag is recommended. It is the most up-to-date and always backwards compatible. Breaking changes would result in a Major version bump. At a minimum you should use a Minor tag.

Tags Security Notice

As shown above, tags are mutable; however, commit hashes are not. Therefore, if security is your top priority, you should pin your actions to a specific commit hash.

• GitHub Documentation
• Article by StepSecurity

Updating Actions

If you prefer to manually update actions, then azat-io/actions-up was created to allow you to easily and securely do this using an interactive CLI with optional excludes.

I also created cssnr/actions-up-action that will run this for you automatically and generate a markdown table for pull requests.

View Example Markdown Table

Scanned 8 workflows, checked 12 actions and found 6 updates.

Results

Name	File	Breaking	Latest
cssnr/check-build-action	check-build.yaml	-	v1.1.0
cssnr/label-creator-action	labeler.yaml	-	v1.0.2
cssnr/mirror-repository-action	mirror.yaml	-	v1.2.0
cssnr/update-version-tags-action	release.yaml	-	v1.3.1
cssnr/package-changelog-action	release.yaml	⚠️	v2.0.0
cssnr/update-version-tags-action	tags.yaml	-	v1.3.1

 

WARNING

These docs are not finished. Please see the README.md on GitHub.