Create a GitHub Actions workflow to auto-update R package version — use_workflow_version

Copies the built-in version_update.yml workflow template to the target package's .github/workflows/ directory. The workflow automatically bumps the R package version based on commit messages, or manually via workflow_dispatch with a specified version type.

Version bump rules (from commit messages, case-insensitive):

major / breaking - increments the major version (X.0.0)
feat / feature / minor - increments the minor version (x.Y.0)
patch / fix / bug - increments the patch version (x.y.Z)
Otherwise, no version bump occurs

The workflow_dispatch input always overrides commit message detection.

Usage

use_workflow_version_update(
  path = NULL,
  overwrite = FALSE,
  color = "blue",
  ...
)

Arguments

path: Character. Path to the package root directory. If NULL (the default), uses the current working directory.
overwrite: Logical. If TRUE, overwrite an existing workflow file. Defaults to FALSE.
color: badge color
...: pass to badger::badge_devel

Value

Invisibly returns the path to the created workflow file.

NEWS.md guard

Before writing anything, the action compares the version it is about to set with the highest version documented in NEWS.md (heading lines such as # pkg 1.2.3 (2026-01-01)). The bump is skipped when the new version is greater than that maximum, so that no release is shipped without a matching NEWS.md entry. When NEWS.md is missing or holds no version heading, the check is bypassed with a warning.

Rust crate version

When the package ships Rust code, the action also reads the version key of the [package] table in src/rust/Cargo.toml and rewrites it to the new version. The rest of the manifest is left untouched and the same NEWS.md guard applies, so the crate version never exceeds the highest version documented in NEWS.md. The file is skipped when it is absent or declares no literal version (for example version.workspace = true).

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
temp <- tempdir()
usethis::create_package(temp)
use_workflow_version_update(temp)
use_workflow_version_update(temp, overwrite = TRUE)
} # }