Releasing Figma libraries
Releasing code libraries is the first step of the Vertical release process described in the Version management principles page.
Making good releases
Releasing is a critical step in the lifecycle of your facet. As a repository owner, you're in charge of delivering predictable and reliable updates:
- predictable: the list of changes is clearly documented so that your consumers know what to expect from it (new features, bug fixes, breaking changes).
- reliable: the update is actually doing what it pretends, not bringing unexpected changes or side effects.
To help with this, on top of writing good code, we use the
semantic-release
tool in our CI to automate the
release,.
Where packages are published
Packages are published to several registries depending on the
license they use in their package.json
file. The
following table shows in which registries the packages are published for each
license used in Quartz:
License | Public NPM registry | Quartz's private GitHub Packages | Schneider Electric internal registry |
---|---|---|---|
Private | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
Apache 2.0 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Creative Commons 4.0 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
This logic is included in the Quartz's semantic-release
preset (see further).
How semantic-release works
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.
— Excerpt from the semantic-release
documentation
The workflows in GitHub Actions are configured to execute the following jobs:
- Run the linting, testing and build steps
- Run
semantic-release
in--dry-mode
to check the release will go fine without actually pushing packages into the wild - Run
semantic-release
(only on thenext
andmain
branches) to:- compute and update the version number in your
package.json
file - generate and update the release notes in the
CHANGELOG.md
file - publish the packages with the
next
orlatest
npm tag on the appropriate registries
- compute and update the version number in your
Quartz preset for semantic-release
To ease and standardize the automated releases, Quartz provides a
semantic-release
preset. This preset is included in
your package.json
and provides the specific rules and configurations for
Quartz:
- the commit types, as described in the Conventional commits section of the Versioning page
- the target registries based on the license declared in the
license
field of thepackage.json
file - the numbering rules (including the
-beta.X
suffix) - which npm tag to apply depending on the branch
- and other configuration details
About npm tags
npm tags can be used to provide an alias instead of version numbers.
A tag can be used when installing packages as a reference to a version instead of using a specific version number:
npm install @quartzds/<name>@<tag>`
By default, the latest
tag is used by npm to identify the current version of a
package, and npm install <pkg>
(without any @<version>
or @<tag>
specifier) installs the latest tag.
Quartz uses the following tags:
next
: the latest beta release of a packagelatest
: the latest production release of a package
Release lifecycle
Follow these steps to ensure a good developer experience to your consumers when they will update your packages:
- Release a beta version
- Collect feedback from early testers
- Make any necessary fixes and release a new beta version
- When stable, release a production version
- Continue the vertical release process
Release a beta version
As explained in the Versioning page, contributed Pull Requests (PRs) should
first be merged into the next
branch.
Collect feedback from early testers
Once this beta release is done, you should notify your consumers (reporters of a bug, pilot projects for new features) and ask them to test the update.
Release a production version
Once the preview packages on the next branch have been tested and validated, you
can merge the next
branch into the main
branch.
Only the repository owners are allowed to push to the next
and main
branches. Because you checked the quality of the contribution in the beta stage,
you don't need to create a Pull Request for that merge.
The CI workflow is going through the same steps as the beta stage, with the following differences:
- it creates a production version (following the Semantic versioning rules)
- it publishes the package with the
latest
npm tag.
Announce the release
An example release history
The following Git diagram shows an example release history using
semantic-release
with the custom Quartz preset:
You can see typical release and versioning scenarios:
-
The
feat/123-foo-syntax
branch is adding a new feature, so the next version would be1.1.0
- As it is merged into the
next
branch, a1.1.0-beta.1
beta version is released. - Then, the
next
branch is merged intomain
, which releases the1.1.0
production version.
- As it is merged into the
-
The
fix/456-bar-syntax-bug
branch is fixing a bug, so the next version would be1.1.1
.- As it is merged into the
next
branch, a1.1.0-beta.1
beta version is released. - Then, the
next
branch is merged intomain
, which releases the1.1.1
production version.
- As it is merged into the
-
Finally, the
feat/789-button-tooltip
branch is adding a new feature, but it is also introducing breaking changes (as depicted by the exclamation mark!
near the commit type), so the next version would be2.0.0
.- As it is merged into the
next
branch, a2.0.0-beta.1
beta version is released. - Then, the
next
branch is merged intomain
, which releases the2.0.0
production version.
- As it is merged into the