# Automate Releases

---

## Overview

Connect your GitHub Actions workflows to Fly once, and every push automatically publishes your artifacts and creates a release with full traceability.

Once your CI is connected, every push to your repository automatically:

- **Publishes artifacts** to your team's Fly Registry (npm packages, Docker images, Helm charts, etc.)
- **Creates a release** with full traceability from commit to artifact
- **Links everything together**: commits, pull requests, artifacts, and releases are connected automatically
- **Finds releases by content**, not just version numbers. Ask your coding agent "what release contains this fix?" and get an answer

Connect once, and it works for every push going forward.

---

## Connect Your CI

### Use Your Coding Agent

Simply prompt your coding agent:

*"Configure my workflows with Fly"*

Fly scans your `.github/workflows/*.yml` files and opens a **pull request** with
the required changes already applied. Review the PR, merge it, and you're done.

### Configure Manually

Add the same two snippets (shown below) to your `.github/workflows/*.yml` files directly.

Place the **permissions block** at the top level of your workflow file,
after `on:` and before `jobs:`.

Place the **Fly action step** within your job, after any package manager setup
steps (like `actions/setup-node`) and before artifact operations
(like `npm publish` or `docker push`).

---

## What Fly Adds After Connecting

When Fly opens the PR, it adds two things to each workflow file:

**OIDC permissions** for secure, token-free authentication:
```yaml
permissions:
  contents: read
  id-token: write
```

**Fly action** to configure your package managers on the CI runner:
```yaml
- uses: jfrog/fly-action@v1              # Setup Fly package managers
```

**For Docker and Helm**, you need to reference your Fly Registry in push and pull commands. The Fly action exports your registry hostname as `FLY_REGISTRY_SUBDOMAIN` (e.g., `acmecorp.jfrog.io`), so your image path becomes:

`acmecorp.jfrog.io/docker/my-app:tag`

**After the job completes**, the Fly action produces a job summary showing collected artifacts and notifies Fly that the session has ended.

### Upload and Download Generic Artifacts

You can upload and download files that aren't standard packages (binaries, archives, test results) to and from Fly. After the Fly action step in your workflow, add the upload or download action with a package name, version, and the files to include.

**Upload:**

```yaml
- uses: jfrog/fly-action/upload@v1
  with:
    name: my-app
    version: '1.0.0'
    files: |
      dist/app.zip
      dist/app.tar.gz
```

**Download:**

```yaml
- uses: jfrog/fly-action/download@v1
  with:
    name: my-app
    version: '1.0.0'
    files: |
      app.zip
    output-dir: ./downloads
```

### Skip Specific Package Managers

By default, the Fly action configures all supported package managers. To skip specific ones, use the `ignore` input:

```yaml
- uses: jfrog/fly-action@v1
  with:
    ignore: docker,pip
```

---

## Full Examples

### npm Package Workflow

```yaml
name: Build and Publish npm Package

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

permissions:                                   # Required for Fly OIDC authentication
  contents: read
  id-token: write

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: '18'
      - uses: jfrog/fly-action@v1              # Setup Fly package managers
      - run: npm install                       # Dependencies from Fly registry
      - run: npm run build
      - run: npm publish                       # Publish to Fly registry
```

### Docker Image Workflow

```yaml
name: Build and Push Docker Image

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

permissions:                                   # Required for Fly OIDC authentication
  contents: read
  id-token: write

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: jfrog/fly-action@v1              # Setup Fly package managers
      - run: docker build -t ${{ env.FLY_REGISTRY_SUBDOMAIN }}/docker/my-app:${{ github.sha }} .
        # Base images pulled from Fly registry
      - run: docker push ${{ env.FLY_REGISTRY_SUBDOMAIN }}/docker/my-app:${{ github.sha }}
        # Push to Fly registry
```

### Generic Artifacts Workflow

```yaml
name: Build and Upload Release Artifacts

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

permissions:                                   # Required for Fly OIDC authentication
  contents: read
  id-token: write

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: jfrog/fly-action@v1              # Setup Fly package managers
      - run: make build                        # Build your project
      - uses: jfrog/fly-action/upload@v1       # Upload artifacts to Fly
        with:
          name: my-app
          version: '1.0.0'
          files: |
            dist/app.zip
            dist/app.tar.gz
```

---

## Next Steps

- [Deploy & Track →](../runtime-deployment/) - Deploy releases to your environments
- [Workflows →](../../fly-platform/workflows/) - Full platform reference for workflows
- [Releases →](../../fly-platform/releases/) - Understanding releases