GitHub Action

GitHub Action

Use the GitHub Action when you want CI to enforce the same policy that rrt-hooks can enforce locally.

Overview

The composite Action runs rrt-hooks checks inside a GitHub Actions job. It validates branch names, Conventional Commit subjects, and changelog policy. Optional inputs add doctor, release-health, folder, and artifact checks. Reach for it when CI has to be the gate, not just the contributor’s machine.

Minimal workflow

- uses: actions/checkout@v6
  with:
    fetch-depth: 0

- uses: Anselmoo/repo-release-tools@v1.18.0
  with:
    check-branch-name: "true"
    check-commit-subject: "true"
    check-changelog: "true"

fetch-depth: 0 is required because changelog and commit-subject checks use git log and commit metadata. A shallow checkout makes those checks flaky at best and misleading at worst — tiny chaos gremlin, large confusion.

What it checks

• branch naming
• Conventional Commit subjects
• changelog policy
• optional clean-worktree enforcement
• optional rrt doctor core automation checks
• optional rrt release check release-target validation
• optional folder structure validation (check-folder)
• optional artifact hash integrity (check-artifacts)

Changelog strategy: use auto unless you have a reason not to

changelog-strategy controls how CI decides whether a changelog is valid.

Strategy	When to use it	What passes
auto (default)	most repositories	follows changelog_workflow from repo config
per-commit	every changelog-relevant commit must touch CHANGELOG.md	CHANGELOG.md appears in the commit’s changed files
unreleased	you maintain [Unreleased] continuously, often via hooks	## [Unreleased] is non-empty
release-only	changelog is generated or reviewed only when cutting a release	check is skipped during normal CI

How auto resolves

changelog_workflow	Action behavior when changelog-strategy: auto
incremental (default)	resolves to per-commit
squash	resolves to release-only
not configured	resolves to per-commit

Use an explicit override only when you want CI to be stricter or looser than the repo default. A common example is pairing local rrt-update-unreleased hooks with CI changelog-strategy: "unreleased".

Examples

Default CI setup

- uses: Anselmoo/repo-release-tools@v1.18.0
  with:
    check-changelog: "true"
    changelog-strategy: "auto"

Hook-managed [Unreleased] workflow

- uses: Anselmoo/repo-release-tools@v1.18.0
  with:
    check-changelog: "true"
    changelog-strategy: "unreleased"

Release-time changelog workflow

- uses: Anselmoo/repo-release-tools@v1.18.0
  with:
    check-changelog: "true"
    changelog-strategy: "release-only"

Inputs

Input	Default	Description
check-branch-name	"true"	Validate branch naming convention
check-commit-subject	"true"	Validate Conventional Commit subject
check-changelog	"true"	Validate changelog policy for changelog-relevant commits
changelog-strategy	"auto"	auto / incremental / per-commit / unreleased / release-only
changelog-file	"CHANGELOG.md"	Path to changelog file
check-dirty-tree	"false"	Fail when generated files leave the work tree dirty
check-doctor	"false"	Run rrt doctor core automation checks
check-release-health	"false"	Run rrt release check for version targets, pin targets, and changelog files
check-folder	"false"	Fail if the repository folder structure violates [tool.rrt.folders] config
check-artifacts	"false"	Fail if generated artifact hashes disagree with .rrt/artifacts.lock.toml
branch-name	—	Override the branch name to validate
branch-ref-type	—	Override branch ref type detection
commit-subject	—	Override the commit subject to validate

check-dirty-tree defaults to "false" because GitHub Actions checkouts are normally clean already. Turn it on when a workflow generates files and you want the job to assert that nothing was left uncommitted.

check-doctor runs rrt doctor, which verifies core automation wiring such as hook and CI integration surfaces.

check-release-health runs rrt release check, which verifies that version targets, pin targets, and changelog files in repo config are reachable and well-formed. It is the better release gate when your repository relies on config-driven version updates.

check-folder runs rrt-hooks folder-check, which validates the repository directory layout against the [tool.rrt.folders] configuration. Use it to enforce a consistent project structure across contributors and CI environments.

check-artifacts runs rrt-hooks artifacts-check, which compares generated artifact hashes against the committed .rrt/artifacts.lock.toml. It detects artifacts that were regenerated but not re-snapshotted, or vice versa.

Outputs

Output	Description
detected-version	Published version for this run, printed by rrt ci-version compute
changelog-status	clean, dirty, or missing for the [Unreleased] section
health-summary	JSON object summarising the policy check results

detected-version follows the rrt ci-version compute rules. A v* tag build yields the tag without its leading v. A main build yields {base}.dev{run_id}{run_attempt:02d}. Any other ref yields the configured base version. The output is empty when no version target can be read.

Caveats

• fetch-depth: 0 is required. Shallow checkouts break the changelog and commit-subject checks.
• Tag-triggered workflows skip branch-name validation automatically.
• The action installs repo-release-tools from the action checkout, not from the consumer repository.
• changelog-strategy defaults to auto, so CI can follow repository config instead of forcing one changelog policy everywhere.
• Only check-branch-name, check-commit-subject and check-changelog default to "true". Every other check is opt-in, including dirty-tree, doctor, release-health, eol, docs, folder and artifacts.
• The version pin in each example tracks the current release. Pin the tag you actually want.

Related docs

• publish-snapshot Action for publishing a snapshot to a mirror remote
• Hooks for running the same checks locally
• rrt doctor for the checks behind check-doctor
• rrt branch for the naming convention CI validates