Return the upload url in the outputs

[jcornaz]

TL;DR

When releasing an application (not a library), it is common to upload the binaries to the github release. There is even an action do to it easily: https://github.com/actions/upload-release-asset.

But to upload to a github release, we need the "upload_url" which is returned when the release is created.

release-please could set that uload url in the outputs so we can write upload the artifacts to the release created by release-please.

Detailed design

Possible example of usage:

name: release
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    outputs:
      release_created: ${{ steps.release.outputs.release_created }}
      upload_url: ${{ steps.release.outputs.upload_url }}
    steps:
      - uses: google-github-actions/release-please-action@v3.1
        id: release
        with:
          release-type: rust

  upload-artifacts:
    needs: release
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: needs.release.outputs.release_created
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2.4.0
      - uses: actions-rs/toolchain@v1.0.7
        with:
          toolchain: stable
      - run: cargo build --release
      - uses: actions/upload-release-asset@v1
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        with:
          # Get the upload url from release-please outputs
          upload_url: ${{ needs.release.outputs.upload_url }} 
          asset_path: ./target/release/my-artifact

Additional information

No response

[jcornaz]

Sorry. I don't know why I didn't see it was already there....

[brad-jones]

Perhaps the reason you missed it is because it isn't returned? I thought I'd give release-please a go over semantic-release but have been debugging why my upload action isn't working. The upload_url simply is not returned in the actions outputs.

[jcornaz]

Ah... maybe indeed.

[axieum]

Check my comment here, maybe it will help you 😊

https://github.com/google-github-actions/release-please-action/issues/400#issuecomment-1025264971

[jcornaz]

Thanks @axieum. Indeed with some tools we can use the tag_name instead of the upload url (I think that would also work with softprops/action-gh-release)

Remains open the question of what to do to fix this issue. We could either:

• Update the readme to remove upload_url from the list of output, as it is in fact not in the outputs, but also may not be necessary as we should be able to use the tag_name instead.
• Fix the behavior to produce the upload_url so that it matches the documentation.