semantic-release/docs/01-usage/ci-configuration.md

CI configuration

Running semantic-release

The semantic-release command will only run fully in a CI environment. If it does not detect that it is in a CI environment, it will automatically run in dry-run mode.

Within a CI environment, the semantic-release command must be executed only after all the tests in the CI build pass, otherwise it will release potentially faulty code. If the build runs multiple jobs (for example to test on multiple Operating Systems or Node versions) the CI has to be configured to guarantee that the semantic-release command is executed only after all jobs are successful.

Follow the CI system's documentation to find out how to do this:

• Travis Build Stages
• CircleCI Workflows
• Codeship Deployment Pipelines
• GitLab Pipelines
• Codefresh Pipelines
• Wercker Workflows
• GoCD Pipelines.

This documentation provides a few CI pipelines recipes for more details.

Authentication

Push access to remote repos

semantic-release requires push access to remote Git repositories in order to push the Git tags it created.

The Git authentication can be set with one of the following environment variables:

Variable	Description
GH_TOKEN or GITHUB_TOKEN	A GitHub personal access token.
GL_TOKEN or GITLAB_TOKEN	A GitLab personal access token.
BB_TOKEN or BITBUCKET_TOKEN	A Bitbucket personal access token.
GIT_CREDENTIALS	URL encoded Git username and password in the format <username>:<password>. The username and password must each be individually URL encoded, not the : separating them.

Alternatively the Git authentication can be set up via SSH keys.

Authentication needs for plugins

Most semantic-release plugins require setting up authentication in order to publish to a package manager registry. See each plugin's documentation for the environment variables required.

It is to note, however, that:

• The default @semantic-release/github plugin requires the same GH_TOKEN environment variable as above
• The default @semantic-release/npm plugin requires the following environment variables:

Variable	Description
NPM_TOKEN	npm token created via npm token create. Note: Only the auth-only level of npm two-factor authentication is supported.

See each plugin's documentation for the environment variables required.

Note

: The authentication token/credentials have to be made available in the CI service via environment variables.

See CI pipelines recipes for more details on how to configure environment variables in your CI service.