Cannot disable release body append mechanism when updating an existing release

If you update the release from multiple jobs then the body is appended and the behavior cannot be controlled. Here is where the problem is: https://github.com/softprops/action-gh-release/blob/master/src/github.ts#L171

Why is this a problem?

Some projects need to be built on multiple architectures and multiple operating systems. For example, compile on x64-windows, x86-windows, x64-linux, x64-osx. Such project is run on 4 different jobs, uses a matrix configuration -> each job creates a release with a unique artifact.

What I want to accomplish is to have a single release with multiple binaries for the same architecture with git log as the body of the release. But instead I get this:

My config looks like this:

      - name: Release
        uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v1
        if: startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/tags/')
        with:
          body: ${{ steps.create_changelog.outputs.log }} # comes from "git log"
          files: ${{ steps.create_artifact.outputs.path }}
          draft: false
          prerelease: false
          name: Release ${{ steps.get_release_name.outputs.tag }}
          tag_name: ${{ steps.get_release_name.outputs.tag }}
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Would it be possible to implement something like this?

with:
  append: false

[softprops]

That seems doable, yes

Some projects need to be built on multiple architectures and multiple operating systems. For example, compile on x64-windows, x86-windows, x64-linux, x64-osx. Such project is run on 4 different jobs, uses a matrix configuration -> each job creates a release with a unique artifact.

A few alternatives that require no change to to this action

• You could leverage upload and download artifacts actions. Have multiple jobs that build release artifacts use upload-artifact then in a separate job that depends on those, download the artifacts and run the gh release action just once

• use an if filter to conditionally set release notes for one of your architectures assuming all release notes are the same and an flipped if for the remainder

[robkooper]

My use case is that my artifacts are large (100Mb - 200Mb each). Having 3 of them will get me over my free 500Mb limit when using upload/download artifacts.

I will use the if statement approach to create release-notes only for one build.