The problem
A release process usually involves a series of automatic steps that must be performed to complete successfully, but what happens when a step fails?
If you want to start the release process with a clean slate
you have to determine which steps succeeded and “undo” whatever action they took… 😖
In other words, automated releases are rarely written to handle a failure, which means they leave a mess behind when a step fails halfway through.
The solution
Realizing the above problem, I figured it can be solved
using the “Command” design pattern, and so atomic-release came into existence.
Today I’m happy to announce the first release of atomic-release
an NPM package that aims to help create automated releases using the command pattern.
The package is more of an SDK than a general-purpose solution, it has 2 core concepts and a reference implementation for releasing NPM packages.
Highlights:
- TypeScript friendly.
- APIs are loosely coupled. Use just what you need.
- Can be used to automate the release of any project type.
Core concept #1 - “Strategy”
An abstract class that decides whether a release should be made, and
the commands to execute during a release.
Core concept #2 — “Command”
An abstract class with two methods, “do” which performs an action, and “undo” which undoes actions taken by the “do” method.
There are several pre-written commands available in the SDK.
See the commands docs for more details.
You can also write your own commands! Here are a few random ideas:
- Slack: A command that notifies a slack channel of a successful release.
- Jira: A command that comments on issues mentioned in the commits included in the release.
- … Anything you can think of
GithubNpmPackageStrategy
This strategy was created to illustrate an implementation of the SDK.
The strategy automates the release process end-to-end, it uses conventional commits to bump semantic versions, and generate changelogs.
Here’s a demo showcasing a failure during a release and the undo taken:
See GithubNpmPackageStrategy for more details.
Fun fact:
The package itself is released using GithubNpmPackageStrategy 🤯
If you are interested in learning more, head over to the official repository.
As always, If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment below.
