Automate Version Tagging Process to trigger the release

[serdardalgic]

Our release process right now is semi-automated:

• Someone with the correct rights creates a v<semantic_version> tag. This part is manual.
• This triggers the release workflow.
• Release workflow creates the release by running go-releaser so that we have executables for different OS and architecture types. (See Releases)

We need to automate the version tagging part. Current options are:

• We could have a process to automate the Changelog creation, as we're enforcing the conventional-commits. This would give us the flexibility of releasing whenever we prefer to release.
• Another option could be implementing the Semantic Releasing process. Semantic releasing advocates for releasing on every push to the main. We need to decide if that's what we want.

[serdardalgic]

There is a repository https://github.com/loopwerk/tag-changelog that automatically generates a changelog since the last tag, using the conventional commit format. Might be useful if we don't choose the Semantic Releasing Process.

[nstott]

Just to make sure that I understand properly. Is your primary question whether we want to
a. build automation that will perform tasks such as creating a change log, publishing documentation, etc. and leave the creation of the version tag manu
or
b. build automation that will automate the tagging of the repo on a push to main, and then perform the automatic tasks above?

How to other terraform providers operate? If you look through a random selection of providers, how do they manage this process? I would prefer not to re-invent the wheel, and use the same approach that other providers take.

[serdardalgic]

Btw, I came across this Versioning and Changelog best practices document in terraform documentation.

Yeah, sorry, I wasn't so clear in the description. I think we should have

• An automated way of generating a Changelog
• An automated way of tagging a commit with a release version and adding this Changelog as the tag message.

The second one is trivial when we have a correct Changelog generation system in place. Tagging can also be done manually, I don't have a strong opinion on that.

[serdardalgic]

I will check the Versioning and Changelog document and try to come up with a PR tomorrow.

[serdardalgic]

Oh, I've also found this repository, it might come in handy.

https://github.com/hashicorp/ghaction-terraform-provider-release

Reusable GitHub Action Workflows for releasing HashiCorp, partner, and community Terraform Providers. These workflows can be called directly or used as examples for implementing a custom workflow.

If you are using the terraform-provider-scaffolding template repository, the .github/workflow/release.yml file will require modifications from the original template files.