@smplcty/release

Shared, laptop-driven release tooling for the simplicity / productionnow apps. It keeps the version contract — the CHANGELOG section headings decide the SemVer bump — in one tested place, instead of drifting across hand-synced shell scripts.

What it does:

• Derives the bump from CHANGELOG.md. ### Removed or **BREAKING** → major; ### Added → minor; otherwise patch.
• Cuts prereleases correctly. --alpha/--beta/--rc/--preRelease=<id> advance the -alpha.N line (prerelease) or start one (pre<bump>) — never jumping a minor or dropping the tag. A malformed --preRelease errors instead of silently shipping a final release.
• Guards against a stale branch. Fails fast (and fails closed) if local is behind its remote, before anything is built or tagged.

Install

pnpm add -D @smplcty/release release-it @release-it/keep-a-changelog

release-it and @release-it/keep-a-changelog are peer dependencies.

Usage

package.json:

"scripts": {
  "local-release": "smplcty-release",
  "local-ci": "./scripts/ci.sh"
}

.release-it.local.json (extend the shared preset, add your repo-specific bits):

{
  "extends": "@smplcty/release/configs/release-it.base.json",
  "git": { "requireBranch": "main" },
  "hooks": {
    "before:init": ["smplcty-release-preflight main", "pnpm local-ci"],
    "after:release": ["./scripts/release.sh"]
  }
}

release-it's extends deep-merges but replaces arrays, so before:init / after:release won't concat with the preset — that's why the generic preflight is a single command (smplcty-release-preflight) you list yourself.

Then:

pnpm local-release                 # final release; increment from the changelog
pnpm local-release --alpha         # staging prerelease (also --beta / --rc)
pnpm local-release --alpha --release-version   # print the next version and exit

CLIs

| Command | Purpose | | --- | --- | | smplcty-release | Run release-it with the changelog-derived / prerelease increment and the repo's local config. | | smplcty-release-preflight [branch] | before:init gate: clean tree + branch current + [Unreleased] has entries. | | smplcty-changelog-bump [path] | Print major/minor/patch for the [Unreleased] section (exits non-zero if empty). |

Library

import { computeBump, parseReleaseFlags, computeReleaseArgs, assertBranchCurrent } from '@smplcty/release';

All functions are pure (git access is injectable) and unit-tested — the tests are the executable spec for the version contract.