adamtaranto/Citation Sync Action

Automatically synchronize CITATION.cff version and date with Git tags

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Maintenance Recency: Maintainedlast commit Nov 7, 2025
License: MIT

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workflow.ymlSHA-pinned

uses: adamtaranto/citation-sync-action@ac28811c239142e9240b702a2cebf7f9226328fc # v1

tags can be moved; commit SHAs can't. why a SHA?

Inputs

name	description	required	default
token	GitHub token for authentication. Use secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN or a PAT with contents:write permission.	no	${{ github.token }}
citation-path	Path to CITATION.cff file relative to repository root.	no	CITATION.cff
target-branch	Branch to push updated CITATION.cff to. If empty, auto-detects default branch.	no	""
update-mode	Update mode: "increment" (default, creates new incremented tag) or "match" (updates to match current tag without increment).	no	increment
version-prefix	Expected version tag prefix (e.g., "v", "release-", ""). Empty string for no prefix.	no	v
version-format	Expected semantic version format regex. Default validates X.Y.Z format with optional pre-release suffix.	no	^([0-9]+)\.([0-9]+)\.([0-9]+)(-[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+)?$
enable-debug	Enable debug output for troubleshooting.	no	false
commit-message	Template for commit message. Use {version} as placeholder for the new version.	no	chore: Update CITATION.cff to version {version}
git-user-name	Git user name for commits.	no	github-actions[bot]
git-user-email	Git user email for commits.	no	github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com
skip-ci	Add [skip ci] to commit message to prevent triggering CI workflows.	no	true
fail-on-conflict	Fail if incremented tag already exists (only applies in increment mode).	no	true
validate-cff	Validate CITATION.cff format before and after updates.	no	true
use-pull-request	Create a pull request instead of pushing directly to the target branch. Required for protected branches.	no	false
pr-branch-prefix	Prefix for pull request branch names (only used when use-pull-request is true).	no	citation-sync-
pr-title	Title template for pull request. Use {version} as placeholder (only used when use-pull-request is true).	no	Update CITATION.cff to version {version}
pr-body	Body template for pull request. Use {version}, {date}, {original_tag} as placeholders (only used when use-pull-request is true).	no	This PR updates CITATION.cff based on tag {original_tag}.

Outputs

name	description
needs-update	Whether CITATION.cff needed updating (true/false).
skipped	Whether the update was skipped due to newer tags existing (true/false).
original-tag	The tag that triggered this action.
new-tag	The new tag created (if update was needed and mode is increment). Empty in match mode.
new-version	The new version written to CITATION.cff.
commit-sha	The commit SHA with updated CITATION.cff (if update was needed).
target-branch	The branch that was updated (detected or specified).
pull-request-number	The pull request number (if use-pull-request is true and update was needed).
pull-request-url	The pull request URL (if use-pull-request is true and update was needed).