GRIT Automated Release Process

Overview

We need to implement an automated release process for GRIT (GitLab Runner Infrastructure Toolkit) that follows the established patterns used by GitLab Runner. By leveraging the existing Releases and Releaser projects, we'll benefit from consistency and established tooling rather than building our own solution from scratch.

This approach will provide some advantages:

• Enforce MR labeling requirements (e.g., requiring type:: tags)
• Auto-generate changelogs based on merged MRs
• Follow a standardized release workflow
• Use existing CI/CD pipeline configurations
• Maintain consistency with other GitLab Runner ecosystem tools

AMI Pipeline Integration

As part of this process, we'll also include the AMI pipeline, establish a retention policy, and define our guarantees for GRIT releases.

Implementation Steps

Each of the following steps will be tracked as individual issues within this epic:

1. Add Changelog Configuration
2. Add GRIT to the Releases Project
3. Implement Version Tooling in GRIT
4. Create Tag Pipeline Job
5. Create Main Branch Merge Pipeline Job
6. Update GRIT Documentation

References

• Releaser project
• Releases project
• Initial discussion
• Implementation discussion
• Runner implementation discussion
• GitLab Runner's release process