Discussion: Automatic Releases

[tdruez]

Issuing a new release currently requires manual maintainer intervention, as documented in RELEASE.md.

The packages (PyPI, Docker images) and the GitHub release entry (including changelog) are already generated automatically—only the version bump and release trigger remain manual.

Proposal

Automate the release process based on commit history and heuristics, removing the need for manual intervention.

Candidate Tools

semantic-release

semantic-release uses the commit messages to determine the consumer impact of changes in the codebase. Following formalized conventions for commit messages, semantic-release automatically determines the next semantic version number, generates a changelog and publishes the release.
Tools such as commitizen or commitlint can be used to help contributors and enforce valid commit messages.

python-semantic-release

Python Semantic Release (PSR) provides an automated release mechanism determined by SemVer and Commit Message Conventions for your Git projects.

release-please

Rather than continuously releasing what's landed to your default branch, release-please maintains Release PRs.

commitizen
Python-native tool for enforcing commit conventions and automating version bumps.

Next Steps

Discuss and prototype an implementation for ScanCode.io. If successful, propagate to other repositories.

Commit message format

https://github.com/semantic-release/semantic-release?tab=readme-ov-file#commit-message-format
https://github.com/angular/angular/blob/main/contributing-docs/commit-message-guidelines.md

[Jadhav-Dhanashri]

Hello maintainers,
I’m interested in working on this issue as part of GSoC. I’ve gone through the issue details and related code, and I’d love to take ownership and start contributing.

If it’s available, could you please assign this issue to me?

[dikshaa2909]

Hi @tdruez,

I went through the current release workflow , since packaging and publishing are already automated, the only manual parts left are version bumping, changelog updates, and tagging.
I’d like to prototype a lightweight automation using python-semantic-release to handle version calculation (via conventional commits), update version files, generate the changelog, and create the tag — while keeping the existing PyPI workflow unchanged.
Does that direction align with what you had in mind? I'll draft a PR for discussion.