cutrelease

Cut a release in one command — bump, notes, tag, GitHub release. Zero dependencies.

cutrelease does the repetitive release dance for you: it bumps the version in your project file, writes grouped release notes from the commits since the last tag, commits the bump, creates an annotated tag, and (optionally) publishes a GitHub release. Run --dry-run first to see exactly what it will do.

Nothing but the Python standard library and the git you already have.

Install

pip install cutrelease

Requires Python 3.8+ and git.

Usage

# See the plan without touching anything
cutrelease --bump minor --dry-run

# Bump the patch version, commit, tag
cutrelease --bump patch

# Release an explicit version, push, and create the GitHub release
export GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_...
cutrelease 1.4.0 --push --github-release --repo me/myproject

cutrelease finds your version in pyproject.toml or package.json automatically. If there is no version file, it falls back to your latest git tag.

A dry run looks like this

Plan:
  version file : pyproject.toml
  version      : 1.3.2 -> 1.4.0
  tag          : v1.4.0
  commit       : True
  push         : False
  github release: False

Release notes:

## v1.4.0

### Features
- add a --dry-run flag

### Bug Fixes
- handle repos with no tags yet

Options

Flag	Description
VERSION	Explicit version to release (omit when using --bump).
--bump {major,minor,patch}	Bump part of the current version.
--version-file PATH	Version file to update (default: autodetect).
--tag-prefix P	Tag prefix (default v).
--no-commit	Do not commit the version bump.
--push	Push the commit and tag.
--github-release	Create a GitHub release (needs --repo, $GITHUB_TOKEN).
--dry-run	Print the plan and make no changes.

How notes are grouped

Commits since the last tag are grouped by Conventional Commits type: feat → Features, fix → Bug Fixes, and so on. Breaking changes (! or a BREAKING CHANGE footer) get their own section. Anything unrecognized lands under Other, so nothing is dropped.

Development

pip install -e ".[test]"
python -m pytest

License

MIT — see LICENSE.