github actions: how to check if current push has new tag (is new release)?

Question

name: test-publish  on: [push]  jobs:   test:     strategy:       ...     steps:       ...    publish:     needs: test     if: github.event_name == 'push' && github.ref???     steps:       ...  # eg: publish package to PyPI 

What should I put in jobs.publish.if in order to check that this commit is new release?

Is this okay: contains(github.ref, '/tags/')?

What will happen if I push code and tag at the same time?

Answer 1

You could do this to check if the current push event is for a tag starting with v.

  publish:     needs: test     if: startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/tags/v') 

As you pointed out though, I don't think you can guarantee that this is a new release. My suggestion would be to use on: release instead of on: push. This will only trigger on a newly tagged release.

See the docs for on: release here: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/events-that-trigger-workflows#release

Answer 2

An alternative way to use a GitHub Release as a trigger (in case if you want to use tags freely and release specific versions only):

on:   release:     types: [created]  jobs:   release-job:     name: Releasing     if: github.event_name == 'release' && github.event.action == 'created'