tf-drift

Scheduled Release Automation

Problem and Goal

Releases currently require a pushed v* tag. That keeps publishing explicit, but it also means new commits can sit unreleased until someone remembers to tag. The goal is to add a daily GitHub Actions release path that publishes only when the default branch has commits after the latest stable tag.

Scope

The release workflow should:

• Run daily at midnight UTC with cron: '0 0 * * *'.
• Keep manual v* tag pushes working.
• Allow manual GitHub Actions dispatch with an optional vX.Y.Z override.
• Skip scheduled runs when no commits exist after the latest stable vX.Y.Z tag.
• Compute a SemVer bump from Conventional Commit messages when no manual tag is supplied.
• Run the Go race test suite before publishing.
• Run GoReleaser once in the same workflow to avoid GITHUB_TOKEN recursive workflow trigger gaps.

Out of scope:

• Moving the Homebrew formula release path to GoReleaser casks.
• Changing the binary build matrix.
• Replacing GoReleaser with Release Please or semantic-release.

Workflow

The workflow avoids a separate tagger workflow. Scheduled and manual dispatch runs create a local tag at the checked-out commit, then GoReleaser publishes the GitHub Release and release tag.

Version Rules

• BREAKING CHANGE: in a commit body or ! in a Conventional Commit subject triggers a major bump.
• feat: triggers a minor bump.
• Any other new commit triggers a patch bump.
• A manual version input must match vX.Y.Z.
• Existing tags are never recreated.

Edge Cases

• Schedule runs are best-effort on GitHub Actions, so workflow_dispatch remains available for manual recovery.
• A workflow-created tag using GITHUB_TOKEN would not trigger a second workflow; the design publishes from the same job instead.
• Concurrent release runs are serialized with a workflow-level concurrency group.
• GoReleaser receives target_commitish: "" so the release tag points at the exact commit being released.

Acceptance Criteria

• .github/workflows/release.yml includes a daily midnight UTC schedule.
• Pushed v* tags still run the existing GoReleaser release path.
• Scheduled runs skip when the latest stable tag already points at HEAD.
• Scheduled runs compute the expected next tag from commits after the latest stable tag.
• The workflow runs go test -race -v ./... before GoReleaser.
• actionlint passes for the release workflow.

Test Plan

• Run go test -race -v ./....
• Run actionlint against .github/workflows/release.yml.
• Run git diff --check.
• Simulate the SemVer calculation against the current local tag history.
• Run goreleaser check to catch configuration errors and record any pre-existing deprecation warnings.

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