Draft-Release Creation Action by yaswant · Pull Request #86 · MetOffice/growss

Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) · 2026-06-30T01:37:24Z

PR Summary

Code Reviewer: Andrew Coughtrie (@andrewcoughtrie)

Code Quality Checklist

(Some checks are automatically carried out via the CI pipeline)

I have performed a self-review of my own code
My code follows the project's style guidelines
The modified workflow's README has been updated, if required
The changes have been sufficiently tested (please describe)

AI Assistance and Attribution

Some of the content of this change has been produced with the assistance of Generative AI tool name (e.g., Met Office Github Copilot Enterprise, Github Copilot Personal, ChatGPT GPT-4, etc) and I have followed the Simulation Systems AI policy

Met Office Github Copilot Enterprise was used in compiling the README documentation for draft-release workflow.

Code Review

The changes are approriate and testing has been sufficient

Copilot

Pull request overview

Adds a new reusable GitHub Actions workflow to create draft GitHub releases with auto-generated notes, alongside a central release-notes template and end-user documentation. This fits the repo’s goal of providing shared workflows for Simulation Systems projects.

Changes:

Add a reusable workflow (workflow_call) that checks out a central release template and runs gh release create --generate-notes --draft.
Add a shared .github/templates/release.yml to define changelog categories/exclusions.
Add end-user documentation for consuming the workflow, and relax rumdl rules to accommodate the new Markdown patterns.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 4 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

File	Description
`pyproject.toml`	Disables several rumdl Markdown rules to allow the new README content/style.
`draft-release/README.md`	Documents the new “Draft Release” reusable workflow, usage variants, and changelog label taxonomy.
`.github/workflows/draft-release.yaml`	Implements the reusable workflow that injects a release template and creates a draft release via GitHub CLI.
`.github/templates/release.yml`	Defines release-note categories and excluded labels for GitHub’s release notes generator.

💡 Add Copilot custom instructions for smarter, more guided reviews. Learn how to get started.

…lper script for generating release notes

Copilot

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

Copilot

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated 5 comments.

Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) · 2026-07-06T22:56:02Z

+          fetch-tags: true
+          persist-credentials: false
+
+      - name: Checkout shared template repository (sparse)


Now redundant. But thanks for the pointer.

Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) · 2026-07-06T22:55:36Z

+        run: |
+          set -euo pipefail
+
+          TITLE="Release ${GITHUB_REF_NAME} (Milestone?)"


Understood. This is deliberate.

+if [ -n "$PREV_TAG" ]; then
+  COMPARE_RANGE="${PREV_TAG}...${GITHUB_SHA}"
+  # Single API call to get all commit hashes within the release window
+  gh api "repos/${CALLER_REPO}/compare/${COMPARE_RANGE}" --jq '.commits[].sha' >commit-shas.txt
+else
+  git -C local-code rev-list --max-count=300 "${GITHUB_SHA}" >commit-shas.txt
+fi


Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) · 2026-07-06T22:54:54Z

+# Extract pull requests directly from the repository's main PR list.
+# Pull the 200 most recent merged PRs, then match them against commit-shas.txt
+{
+  gh api "repos/${CALLER_REPO}/pulls?state=closed&per_page=100&page=1"
+  gh api "repos/${CALLER_REPO}/pulls?state=closed&per_page=100&page=2"
+} | jq -r '.[] | select(.merged_at != null) |
+  "\(.merge_commit_sha) \(.number) \(.title) | \(.user.login) | \([.labels[].name] | join(","))"' >recent-prs.txt
+


Deliberately skipping --paginate to avoid rate limit exhaustion, and workflow timeout risk.

Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) · 2026-07-06T22:57:06Z

+  metadata=$(echo "$row" | cut -d'|' -f1)
+  user=$(echo "$row" | cut -d'|' -f2 | xargs)
+  labels=$(echo "$row" | cut -d'|' -f3 | xargs)
+  pr=$(echo "$metadata" | awk '{print $2}')
+  title=$(echo "$metadata" | cut -d' ' -f3-)


Suggested code changes will break very badly.

… categorised changelog generation - Introduced a composite action for draft releases, consolidating the release process. - Added a new script to compile release notes from a shared changelog template. - Created a structured YAML template for changelog categories and exclusions. - Updated README to reflect new structure and usage instructions. - Removed previously implemented reusable workflow and streamlined the workflow for better maintainability.

Copilot

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

+This action is intentionally located at repository root level and has the
+following components:
+
+- `draft-release/action.yml` (composite action)


Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) · 2026-07-06T23:01:30Z

+
+jobs:
+    release:
+        runs-on: ubuntu-slim


@github-copilot Not quite. ubuntu-slim is a legitimate, first-party runner image maintained by GitHub in the actions/runner-images repository. See https://github.com/actions/runner-images/blob/main/images/ubuntu-slim/ubuntu-slim-Readme.md

Copilot

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

 exclude = [
    ".github/pull_request_template.md",
 ]
+disable = [
+    "MD033",  # Inline HTML
+    "MD034",  # Bare URL used
+    "MD036",  # Emphasis used instead of a header
+    "MD041",  # First line in file should be a top level header
+]


+| 🔬 Scientific & Algorithmic Updates | `science`, `technical` | **science**: Domain-specific mathematical changes or model updates.<br>**technical**: Deep algorithmic optimisations or background logic shifts. |
+| 📚 Documentation | `documentation` | Changes isolated to READMEs, inline code docstrings, scientific documentation, working practices, or other non-functional documentation updates. |
+| ⚡ Performance Improvements | `optimisation` | Direct speed execution metrics, runtime improvements, memory, storage, or other resource optimisations. |
+| ♻️ Refactoring | `refactor` | Code cleanup, modularisation, or other internal improvements without behavior changes. |
+| 🛠️ Maintenance | `build`, `chore`, `ci` | **build**: Changes affecting build tools or external compiler toolchains.<br>**chore**: General housekeeping, licence updates, or minor administrative tasks.<br>**ci**: Changes to GitHub Actions workflows, CI/CD pipelines, or other automation.|


Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) · 2026-07-06T23:29:39Z

+    Step1 -.-> Desc1[Checks out the calling repository into <code>local-code</code><br>with full history and tags]
+    Step2 -.-> Desc2[Executes <code>compile-release-notes.sh</code><br>using action-local template <code>release.yml</code>]
+    Step4 -.-> Desc3[Executes <code>gh release create/edit</code><br>with categorised changelog notes in draft state]
+    Skip -.-> Desc4[Workflow completes early<br>if no merged PRs found in release window]


You are digressing Copilot. Those html markers are intentional. GitHub's Markdown rendering, particularly of mermaid diagram has some edge cases, so please don't suggest such changes.

Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) · 2026-07-07T08:13:51Z

Andrew Coughtrie (@andrewcoughtrie) this is ready for your review now. I ended up converting it into a composite action rather than a reusable workflow, so the structure has changed quite a bit. Copilot reviews have been helpful, but not the suggested code changes - we need to be careful.
I spoke with Hacka Fett (@christophermaynard) and we agreed that a single optimisaton label is enough. I've also added a couple of extra labels based on our offline discussion.

Draft Release Creation Action

bff3696

github-actions Bot assigned Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) Jun 30, 2026

Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) marked this pull request as ready for review June 30, 2026 12:19

Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) changed the title ~~Draft Release Creation Action~~ Draft-Release Creation Action Jun 30, 2026

Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) requested a review from Copilot June 30, 2026 13:26

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) June 30, 2026 13:27 View session

github-actions Bot requested a review from Andrew Coughtrie (andrewcoughtrie) June 30, 2026 13:28

Copilot AI reviewed Jun 30, 2026

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Comment thread .github/workflows/draft-release.yaml Outdated

Enhance draft release workflow with new changelog categories and a he…

00e05f7

…lper script for generating release notes

Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) requested a review from Copilot July 4, 2026 01:53

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Comment thread .github/bin/compile-release-notes.sh Outdated

Comment thread .github/templates/release.yml Outdated

Comment thread .github/workflows/draft-release.yaml Outdated

Address reviewer comments

b7d296f

Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) requested a review from Copilot July 4, 2026 17:23

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) July 4, 2026 17:23 View session

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Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) added 2 commits July 6, 2026 23:50

Fix typo in README.md: change action.yml to action.yaml

56c5ff5

Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) requested a review from Copilot July 6, 2026 22:52

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) July 6, 2026 22:53 View session

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Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) added 2 commits July 7, 2026 00:03

Fix typo in README.md: change action.yml to action.yaml

c02bc0d

Fix indentation in draft release workflow YAML configuration

36fbbb0

Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) requested a review from Copilot July 6, 2026 23:09

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) July 6, 2026 23:10 View session

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PR Summary

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Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) commented Jul 7, 2026

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Yaswant Pradhan (yaswant) commented Jun 30, 2026 •

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