publish-snapshot Action

publish-snapshot Action

A dedicated composite Action for rrt git publish-snapshot — force-pushing a single-commit, no-history snapshot of tracked content to a secondary remote (e.g. a public downstream mirror of a privately developed repository).

Overview

Use this Action to refresh a public mirror from a private repository. It force-pushes one commit with no history to the remote named by target. Resolve the remote, branch, message, and excludes from a [tool.rrt.publish_targets.<name>] config entry.

It is deliberately not part of the main repo-release-tools Action. That action is a set of read-only, idempotent policy checks meant to run on every PR. publish-snapshot is destructive and belongs on a different trigger. Use push-to-main, a schedule, or workflow_dispatch. Keeping it in its own composite action isolates that risk profile.

Examples

name: Refresh public mirror

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  workflow_dispatch: {}

jobs:
  publish-snapshot:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0

      - uses: Anselmoo/repo-release-tools/actions/publish-snapshot@v1.18.0
        with:
          target: public-preview
          confirm: "true"

Inputs

Input	Default	Description
target	— (required)	Named [tool.rrt.publish_targets.<name>] entry to resolve remote/branch/message/exclude from
confirm	"false"	Set "true" to actually force-push; otherwise this only previews with --dry-run
python-version	"3.12"	Python version used to run repo-release-tools
working-directory	"."	Repository path to install and run repo-release-tools from

Caveats

Force-pushing does not immediately purge old objects on the remote host. They can remain fetchable by direct SHA until the host runs garbage collection. If secrets were ever committed, run git filter-repo or the BFG Repo-Cleaner first. This action only controls what is visible going forward. Clones or forks made before the force-push retain the old history locally, which is outside this tool’s control. Always run with confirm: "false" (the default) first and inspect the dry-run output before flipping it on.

Related docs

• GitHub Action for the read-only policy checks that run on every PR
• rrt CLI for the underlying rrt git publish-snapshot command