cascade-example-release-only

A minimal, runnable example of cascade driving a release-only pipeline with zero deploy environments.

What this demonstrates

This repository exercises the smallest end of cascade: a library-style project that has no environments to promote through, only a release lifecycle. cascade watches trunk, and on every qualifying change it:

• runs a build callback (build-lib),
• generates a changelog with a Contributors section, and
• mints a release-candidate draft, then publishes it as a final release.

The feature slice shown here:

• Zero environments. State lives under an implicit prerelease key rather than per-environment keys.
• tag_prefix: rel-. Tags are rel-<version> (for example rel-1.0.0-rc.0 while a candidate, rel-1.0.0 once published) instead of the default v prefix.
• Contributor changelog. Release notes include a Contributors section.
• State loop. cascade records the released version and committer back into the manifest under ci.state.prerelease.

Layout

Path	Role
.github/manifest.yaml	The cascade manifest. Edit this, then regenerate.
.github/workflows/build-lib.yaml	Stub build callback (echo and sleep).
.github/workflows/orchestrate.yaml	Generated. Runs on trunk changes; mints the RC draft.
.github/workflows/promote.yaml	Generated. Publishes the prerelease into a final release.
.github/actions/manage-release/	Generated composite action used by the workflows.
.github/workflows/scenario-suite.yaml	Hand-written end-to-end check of the full lifecycle.

Regenerating the workflows

The orchestrate and promote workflows and the manage-release action are produced by cascade from the manifest. After editing .github/manifest.yaml, regenerate them:

cascade generate-workflow --config .github/manifest.yaml --force

The cascade CLI version is pinned through the cli_version field in the manifest, which the generated workflows reference when they install the CLI.

The scenario suite

scenario-suite.yaml is a hand-written driver that runs the whole release lifecycle against this repository and asserts the outcome at each stage. It resets to a clean slate, commits a change under src/ to start orchestrate, asserts that a rel-*-rc.* draft and tag appear with populated prerelease state, dispatches promote, then asserts a published rel-<semver> release that is marked latest, with the candidate tags cleaned up and a Contributors section in the body.

It runs on a daily schedule and on manual dispatch. It needs a CASCADE_STATE_TOKEN repository secret with permission to push to trunk and manage releases.