Overview

This PR introduces a comprehensive GitHub Actions workflow that automates the entire release process for the BitPay Utils cryptography pack, eliminating manual steps and reducing the risk of human error.

Features

🚀 Manual Trigger with Inputs

The workflow is manually triggered via workflow_dispatch with three required inputs:

• Branch: Source branch for the release (default: master)
• Version: Semantic version number (e.g., 9.3.3)
• Overview: Release overview text that appears at the top of release notes

📦 Automated Version Management

• Validates version format (X.Y.Z)
• Commits and pushes version changes to the specified branch

🏷️ Git Tagging

• Creates and pushes a version tag automatically
• Ensures proper version tracking in the repository

📝 Smart Changelog Generation

• Automatically generates release notes from merged PR titles
• Includes "Full Changelog" comparison link between tags
• Combines user-provided overview with automated PR list
• Creates a formatted GitHub Release with complete notes

📚 ReadMe.io Integration

• Publishes changelog to ReadMe.io documentation platform
• Properly formats and escapes content for API submission
• Uses secure authentication via README_API_KEY secret

Benefits

• ✅ Eliminates manual version bumping errors
• ✅ Ensures consistent release formatting
• ✅ Automatically documents all changes
• ✅ Keeps documentation platform in sync
• ✅ Provides audit trail through Git history
• ✅ Reduces release time from minutes to seconds

Prerequisites

Requires the following GitHub secret to be configured:

• README_API_KEY - Authentication token for ReadMe.io API

Testing

This workflow can be tested by triggering it manually from the Actions tab with appropriate version and branch inputs.