Generating a release definition

In a high velocity project operating on a trunk such as a #flxbl project and with substantial number of packages, manually generating release definition can be a chore. This can eased by using generating the release definition file automatically after every publish command. One can utilise release config along with release definition generate command to automate the process of generating release definitions.

# Community Edition
sfp releasedefinition:generate \
  --gitref main \
  --configfile config/release-config.yaml \
  --releasename "Release-2.0.0" \
  --directory releases \
  --branchname releasedefns

# sfp-pro Server Edition
sfp server releasedefinition:generate \
  --gitref HEAD \
  --configfile config/release-config.yaml \
  --releasename "Release-2.0.0" \
  --repository myorg/myrepo \
  --branch main

Command Attributes

Community Edition (sfp releasedefinition:generate)

Flag	Description	Required
-c, --gitref	Git reference (branch/tag/commit) to use for artifact selection	Yes
-f, --configfile	Path to the release configuration YAML file	Yes
-n, --releasename	Name of the release for the definition	Yes
-b, --branchname	Repository branch to push the definition to	No
-d, --directory	Directory to write the release definition file	No
--nopush	Create definition locally without pushing to repository	No
--forcepush	Force push changes to the repository branch	No
-m, --metadata	Additional metadata to include in the release definition	No

sfp-pro Edition (sfp server releasedefinition:generate)

Flag	Description	Required
-c, --gitref	Git reference (branch/tag/commit) to use for artifact selection	Yes
-f, --configfile	Path to the release configuration YAML file	Yes
-n, --releasename	Name of the release for the definition	Yes
-b, --branch	Branch name for context (defaults to current branch)	No
--repository	Repository identifier in the format org/repo	Yes
--skip-publish	Generate definition without publishing to server	No
-m, --metadata	Additional metadata to include in the release definition	No
--email	Email of the user generating the release	No

How It Works

The command:

1. Reads the release configuration file to understand which packages to include

2. Uses the specified git reference to determine the latest artifact versions

3. Generates a release definition YAML with the correct versions

4. Either saves locally or publishes to the server/repository

For the community edition, if --nopush is not specified, the definition is pushed to the specified branch. For sfp-pro server edition, the definition is published to the server unless --skip-publish is used.