semantic-release/docs/usage/installation.md

Installation

Local installation

For Node modules projects we recommend installing semantic-release locally and running the semantic-release command with npx:

$ npm install --save-dev semantic-release

Then in the CI environment:

$ npx semantic-release

Note: npx is a tool bundled with npm@>=5.2.0. It is used to conveniently find the semantic-release binary and to execute it. See What is npx for more details.

Global installation

For other type of projects we recommend installing semantic-release directly in the CI environment, also with npx:

$ npx semantic-release

Notes

1. If you've globally installed semantic-release then we recommend that you set the major semantic-release version to install. For example, by using npx semantic-release@18. This way you control which major version of semantic-release is used by your build, and thus avoid breaking the build when there's a new major version of semantic-release. This also means you, or a bot, must upgrade semantic-release when a new major version is released.
2. Pinning semantic-release to an exact version makes your releases even more deterministic. But pinning also means you, or a bot, must update to newer versions of semantic-release more often.
3. You can use Renovate's regex manager to get automatic updates for semantic-release in either of the above scenarios. Put this in your Renovate configuration file:

   {
     "regexManagers": [
       {
         "description": "Update semantic-release version used by npx",
         "fileMatch": ["^\\.github/workflows/[^/]+\\.ya?ml$"],
         "matchStrings": ["\\srun: npx semantic-release@(?<currentValue>.*?)\\s"],
         "datasourceTemplate": "npm",
         "depNameTemplate": "semantic-release"
       }
     ]
   }
   

4. npx is a tool bundled with npm@>=5.2.0. You can use it to install (and run) the semantic-release binary. See What is npx for more details.