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Release fields

The following fields are available when you create or edit a release.

Title

The release title can be customized using the Release title field when creating or editing a release. If no title is provided, the release's tag name is used instead.

Tag name

The release tag name should include the release version. GitLab uses Semantic Versioning for our releases, and we recommend you do too. Use (Major).(Minor).(Patch), as detailed in the GitLab Policy for Versioning.

For example, for GitLab version 10.5.7:

  • 10 represents the major version. The major release was 10.0.0, but often referred to as 10.0.
  • 5 represents the minor version. The minor release was 10.5.0, but often referred to as 10.5.
  • 7 represents the patch number.

Any part of the version number can be multiple digits, for example, 13.10.11.

Release notes description

Every release has a description. You can add any text you like, but we recommend including a changelog to describe the content of your release. This helps users quickly scan the differences between each release you publish.

Git's tagging messages can be included in Release note descriptions by selecting Include tag message in the release notes.

Description supports Markdown.

Release assets

A release contains the following types of assets:

Source code

GitLab automatically generates zip, tar.gz, tar.bz2, and tar archived source code from the given Git tag. These are read-only assets.

Links

A link is any URL which can point to whatever you like: documentation, built binaries, or other related materials. These can be both internal or external links from your GitLab instance. Each link as an asset has the following attributes:

Attribute Description Required
name The name of the link. Yes
url The URL to download a file. Yes
filepath The redirect link to the url. See this section for more information. No
link_type The content kind of what users can download via url. See this section for more information. No

Permanent link to latest release

Introduced in GitLab 14.9.

Latest release page is accessible through a permanent URL. GitLab redirects to the latest release page URL when it is visited.

The format of the URL is:

https://host/namespace/project/-/releases/permalink/latest

We also support, suffix path carry forward on the redirect to the latest release. Example if release v14.8.0-ee is the latest release and has a readable link https://host/namespace/project/-/releases/v14.8.0-ee#release then it can be addressed as https://host/namespace/project/-/releases/permalink/latest#release.

Refer permanent links to latest release assets section to understand more about the suffix path carry forward usage.

Sorting preferences

By default, GitLab fetches the release using released_at time. The use of the query parameter ?order_by=released_at is optional, and support for ?order_by=semver is tracked in this issue.

Permanent links to release assets

The assets associated with a release are accessible through a permanent URL. GitLab always redirects this URL to the actual asset location, so even if the assets move to a different location, you can continue to use the same URL. This is defined during link creation or updating using the filepath API attribute.

The format of the URL is:

https://host/namespace/project/-/releases/:release/downloads/:filepath

If you have an asset for the v11.9.0-rc2 release in the gitlab-org namespace and gitlab-runner project on gitlab.com, for example:

{
  "name": "linux amd64",
  "filepath": "/binaries/gitlab-runner-linux-amd64",
  "url": "https://gitlab-runner-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/v11.9.0-rc2/binaries/gitlab-runner-linux-amd64",
  "link_type": "other"
}

This asset has a direct link of:

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/-/releases/v11.9.0-rc2/downloads/binaries/gitlab-runner-linux-amd64

The physical location of the asset can change at any time and the direct link remains unchanged.

Permanent links to latest release assets

Introduced in GitLab 14.9.

The filepath from permanent links to release assets can be used in combination with permanent link to the latest release. It is useful when we want to link a permanent URL to download an asset from the latest release.

The format of the URL is:

https://host/namespace/project/-/releases/permalink/latest/downloads/:filepath

If you have an asset with filepath for the v11.9.0-rc2 latest release in the gitlab-org namespace and gitlab-runner project on gitlab.com, for example:

{
  "name": "linux amd64",
  "filepath": "/binaries/gitlab-runner-linux-amd64",
  "url": "https://gitlab-runner-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/v11.9.0-rc2/binaries/gitlab-runner-linux-amd64",
  "link_type": "other"
}

This asset has a direct link of:

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/-/releases/permalink/latest/downloads/binaries/gitlab-runner-linux-amd64

Link Types

Introduced in GitLab 13.1.

The four types of links are "Runbook," "Package," "Image," and "Other." The link_type parameter accepts one of the following four values:

  • runbook
  • package
  • image
  • other (default)

This field has no effect on the URL and it's only used for visual purposes in the Releases page of your project.

Use a generic package for attaching binaries

You can use generic packages to store any artifacts from a release or tag pipeline, that can also be used for attaching binary files to an individual release entry. You basically need to:

  1. Push the artifacts to the Generic Package Registry.
  2. Attach the package link to the release.

The following example generates release assets, publishes them as a generic package, and then creates a release:

stages:
  - build
  - upload
  - release

variables:
  # Package version can only contain numbers (0-9), and dots (.).
  # Must be in the format of X.Y.Z, i.e. should match /\A\d+\.\d+\.\d+\z/ regular expresion.
  # See https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/packages/generic_packages/#publish-a-package-file
  PACKAGE_VERSION: "1.2.3"
  DARWIN_AMD64_BINARY: "myawesomerelease-darwin-amd64-${PACKAGE_VERSION}"
  LINUX_AMD64_BINARY: "myawesomerelease-linux-amd64-${PACKAGE_VERSION}"
  PACKAGE_REGISTRY_URL: "${CI_API_V4_URL}/projects/${CI_PROJECT_ID}/packages/generic/myawesomerelease/${PACKAGE_VERSION}"

build:
  stage: build
  image: alpine:latest
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_TAG
  script:
    - mkdir bin
    - echo "Mock binary for ${DARWIN_AMD64_BINARY}" > bin/${DARWIN_AMD64_BINARY}
    - echo "Mock binary for ${LINUX_AMD64_BINARY}" > bin/${LINUX_AMD64_BINARY}
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - bin/

upload:
  stage: upload
  image: curlimages/curl:latest
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_TAG
  script:
    - |
      curl --header "JOB-TOKEN: ${CI_JOB_TOKEN}" --upload-file bin/${DARWIN_AMD64_BINARY} "${PACKAGE_REGISTRY_URL}/${DARWIN_AMD64_BINARY}"
    - |
      curl --header "JOB-TOKEN: ${CI_JOB_TOKEN}" --upload-file bin/${LINUX_AMD64_BINARY} "${PACKAGE_REGISTRY_URL}/${LINUX_AMD64_BINARY}"

release:
  # Caution, as of 2021-02-02 these assets links require a login, see:
  # https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/299384
  stage: release
  image: registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/release-cli:latest
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_TAG
  script:
    - |
      release-cli create --name "Release $CI_COMMIT_TAG" --tag-name $CI_COMMIT_TAG \
        --assets-link "{\"name\":\"${DARWIN_AMD64_BINARY}\",\"url\":\"${PACKAGE_REGISTRY_URL}/${DARWIN_AMD64_BINARY}\"}" \
        --assets-link "{\"name\":\"${LINUX_AMD64_BINARY}\",\"url\":\"${PACKAGE_REGISTRY_URL}/${LINUX_AMD64_BINARY}\"}"

PowerShell users may need to escape the double quote " inside a JSON string with a ` (back tick) for --assets-link and ConvertTo-Json before passing on to the release-cli. For example:

release:
  script:
    - $env:asset = "{`"name`":`"MyFooAsset`",`"url`":`"https://gitlab.com/upack/artifacts/download/$env:UPACK_GROUP/$env:UPACK_NAME/$($env:GitVersion_SemVer)?contentOnly=zip`"}"
    - $env:assetjson = $env:asset | ConvertTo-Json
    - release-cli create --name $CI_COMMIT_TAG --description "Release $CI_COMMIT_TAG" --ref $CI_COMMIT_TAG --tag-name $CI_COMMIT_TAG --assets-link=$env:assetjson

NOTE: Directly attaching job artifacts links to a release is not recommended, because artifacts are ephemeral and are used to pass data in the same pipeline. This means there's a risk that they could either expire or someone might manually delete them.

Number of new and total features (FREE SAAS)

Introduced in GitLab 13.5.

On GitLab.com, you can view the number of new and total features in the project.

Feature count

The totals are displayed on shields and are generated per release by a Rake task in the www-gitlab-com repository.

Item Formula
New features Total count of release posts across all tiers for a single release in the project.
Total features Total count of release posts in reverse order for all releases in the project.

The counts are also shown by license tier.

Item Formula
New features Total count of release posts across a single tier for a single release in the project.
Total features Total count of release posts across a single tier in reverse order for all releases in the project.