ZANARDI Bruno

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Create an archive of files from a named tree.

Describe a commit using the most recent tag reachable from it.

Create, list, delete or verify a tag object.

Your project is in a stable state and you want to create a release? Let’s do it!

First step: create a signature

You need to have a signature to nicely create a release and signatures are stored by gpg. To know the currently stored signatures, run

If nothing appears or if you can’t find your email in the output, you must create your signature with:

Chose 1 to create an asymetric signature

Default is fine, hit <Return>

It is a nice idea to set a expiration date. And there is a way to change it, so say 1y

Should be y

Check entered datas, then O.

Now check gpg:

Allright, gpg is configured.

Share public signature with git

Signing release tags allows end users / contributors to verify release tags, but they need your public key. Here is a way to publish it.
First, add your public key to a git blob object:

Then, tag this object:

Now your public key is shared to anyone who wants to verify a tag.

Create a signed tag

Now you can create a signed tag. But create just one tag by release, no need to create one for each release build. I’ll explain why later in this post.

It is possible you have an error here:

In this case, you must use:

Verify a tag

Generate a build number

This command will generate for you a build number, not a release number. The release number is in fact the tag name!
Here is the format of the generated build number: <tagname>-<nb>-<hash> where <tagname> is the last annotated tag name (and signed tags are annotated), <nb> the number of commits since the tag and <hash> the abbreviate used commit hash. If the last signed tag is at HEAD, <nb> and <hash> are ommitted.
How to generate this number?

<object> can be master, <branch-name>, <tag-name>, <commit-hash>, HEAD, HEAD^, … or nothing (which means HEAD).

You also can specific the size of abbreviate hash using the --abbrev=<n> option, where <n> is the size of the abbreviate hash. For example, the Linux kernel project is currently using --abbrev=10.

The output is not usable only for creating a release. You can use it as <object> for commands like checkout or show.

Build a release

Now it’s time to build your release. You can create a tarball and/or a zip archive of a specific snapshot:

where <object> can took the same values than for describe except that you must specify HEAD instead of nothing.

If you look into your project directory, you should show a ‘tar.gz’ and a ‘zip’ archives with the same name. There are the archives you just created!

You maybe want to only put the files from a specific subfolder in archives. It is possible with the --prefix option:

or put the archives in a specific folder:

I suggest you to create two aliases for archive, commands are long. Or create a script like this one (named git-arc.sh) in your working directory and run it:

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#!/bin/sh

function usage
{
    echo "NAME"
    echo "git-arc: optionnaly tag, create tarball and zip release archives"
    echo ""
    echo "SYNOPSIS"
    echo "git-arc [-t tagname [-m message]] [what]"
    echo ""
    echo "OPTIONS"
    echo "  -t <tagname>"
    echo "    The tag name (optionnal). Tag will be create at 'what'"
    echo ""
    echo "  -m <message>"
    echo "    The message associate to the tag (optionnal). Default is \"release tag\""
    echo ""
    echo "  what"
    echo "    Position to create the tag and make archives. Can be 'master', '<commit_hash>', 'HEAD', 'HEAD^', ... Default is 'HEAD'"
}

tagname="no"
message="release tag"
what="HEAD"

# getting parameters
while [[ $1 ]]; do
    case $1 in 
        -t)                 shift
                            tagname=$1
                            ;;
        -m)                 shift
                            message=$1
                            ;;
        -h | --help)        usage
                            exit 0
                            ;;
        * )                 what=$1
                            ;;
    esac
    shift
done

# check if "releases" directory exists
if [ -d "releases/" ]; then
    mkdir releases
fi

# must create tag?
if [ "$tagname" != "no" ]; then
    echo "Create '"$tagname"' tag..."
    git tag -s $tagname $what -m "${message}"
    if [ $? != 0 ]; then
        echo "Error while creating tag"
        exit 1
    fi
fi

build=$(git describe $what)

echo "Building archives for "$build"..."
# tarball
git archive ${what} | gzip > releases/${build}.tar.gz
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
    echo "Error while creating tar.gz archive"
    exit 1
fi

# zip
git archive ${what} --format=zip > releases/${build}.zip
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
    echo "Error while creating zip archive"
    exit 1
fi

echo "Done"
exit 0

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Reminder

archive

describe

tag

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