How to create releases for public or private repository in GitHub?

Question

I have a problem how create releases in our public or private repository in GitHub ? How to do it using windows cmd or linux terminal ? Is there any special commands for that?

Answer 1

The example below show You how to made a single release cycle, first you should create a central repository, then you create a develop branch.

You create a develop branch

git branch develop
git push -u origin develop

This branch contain the complete history of your project, now whereas your master contain new version. Your team should now clone the central repository and create a tracking branch for develop.

You create a tracking branch for develop

git clone ssg: //user@/path/
git checkout -b develop origin/develop

Everybody now has a local copy of the historical branches set up. So You decide to make a new feature. For that you create separate branches for your respective features with base as your develop branch.

You begin a new feature

git checkout -b some-feature develop

You can to add commits to the feature branch as You wish, then:

git status
git add <some-file>
git commit

You finish your feature

After adding new features, You decides that your feature are ready, now You can merge it into your local develop and push it to the central repository, like so:

git pull origin develop
git checkout develop
git merge some-feature
git push
git branch -d some-feature

The first command makes sure the develop is up to date before trying to merge in the feature. Note that features should never be merged directly into master.

You begin to prepare a release

While others develop's working on his feature, You can start to prepare the first official release of project, You can to use a new branch to encapsulate the release preparations. This step is also where the release's version number is established:

git checkout -b release-0.1 develop

This branch is a place to clean up the release, test everything, update the documentation, and do any other kind of preparation for the upcoming release. It’s like a feature branch dedicated to polishing the release.

You finish the release

Once the release is ready to ship, You merges it into master and develop, then delete the release branch.It's important to merge back into develop because critical updates may have been added to the release branch and they need to be accessible to new features. Like so:

git checkout master
git merge release-0.1
git push
git checkout develop
git merge release-0.1
git push
git branch -d release-0.1

You should know that release branches act as buffer between feature development and public releases. Is good idea that whenever you merge something into master, you should tag the commit for easy reference:

git tag -a 0.1 -m "Initial public release" master
git push --tags

If you want a better explanation, visit this link: https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/comparing-workflows/gitflow-workflow.

Answer 2

Releases are a feature of GitHub, and are not a feature of general git (similar to other Github extra features like Issues and Pull Requests). However, people have created projects that allow you to create GitHub releases from the command line. The following are a few that I could find:

1. Go (golang) Implementation of GitHub releasing: https://github.com/aktau/github-release

2. JS Implementation of GitHub releasing: https://github.com/ungoldman/gh-release