chore: automate-release-process (#1027)

* chore: automate-release-process

* Update README.md

Co-authored-by: Stephen Lang <[email protected]>

* Update README.md

Co-authored-by: Stephen Lang <[email protected]>

* Update README.md

Co-authored-by: Stephen Lang <[email protected]>

* Update README.md

Co-authored-by: Stephen Lang <[email protected]>

* chore: modify markdown

* chore: check markdown formatting

* Update README.md

* Update README.md

* Update README.md

* Update README.md

---------

Co-authored-by: Stephen Lang <[email protected]>

Author: sleepyfoodie

.github/workflows/release.yaml

@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
+name: Release
+
+on:
+  push:
+    tags:
+      - "version-*" # Trigger the workflow on push events to version-* tags
+
+permissions:
+  contents: write
+
+jobs:
+  release:
+    name: Release
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    steps:
+      - name: Create release on kubernetes-mixin
+        uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v2
+        env: 
+          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
+        with:
+          tag_name: ${{ github.ref_name }}
+          repository: kubernetes-monitoring/kubernetes-mixin
+          generate_release_notes: true

README.md

@@ -8,6 +8,8 @@ A set of Grafana dashboards and Prometheus alerts for Kubernetes.
 
 ## Releases
 
+> Note: Releases up until `release-0.12` are changes in their own branches. Changelogs are included in releases starting from [version-0.13.0](https://github.com/kubernetes-monitoring/kubernetes-mixin/releases/tag/version-0.13.0).
+
 | Release branch | Kubernetes Compatibility | Prometheus Compatibility | Kube-state-metrics Compatibility |
 |----------------|--------------------------|--------------------------|----------------------------------|
 | release-0.1    | v1.13 and before         |                          |                                  |
@@ -33,6 +35,27 @@ Warning: This compatibility matrix was initially created based on experience, we
 
 Warning: By default the expressions will generate *grafana 7.2+* compatible rules using the *$__rate_interval* variable for rate functions. If you need backward compatible rules please set *grafana72: false* in your *_config*
 
+### Release steps
+
+Maintainers can trigger the [release workflow](.github/workflows/release.yaml) by pushing a git tag that matches the pattern: `version-*`.
+
+1. Checkout `master` branch and pull for latest.
+
+   ```bash
+   git checkout master
+   ```
+
+2. Create a tag following sem-ver versioning for the version and trigger release.
+
+   ```bash
+   # replace MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH with e.g. 1.2.3
+   tag=version-MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH; git tag $tag && git push origin $tag
+   ```
+
+#### Decisions on backfilling releases
+
+We wanted to backfill `release-0.1` to `release-0.12` to have a changelog, but we were not able to use a GitHub action in a newer commit to trigger a release that generates a changelog on older commits. See #489 for full discussion.
+
 ## How to use
 
 This mixin is designed to be vendored into the repo with your infrastructure config. To do this, use [jsonnet-bundler](https://github.com/jsonnet-bundler/jsonnet-bundler):