Prerelease Branch Configuration for semantic-release

Multi-Branch Prerelease Configuration

semantic-release supports multiple release channels, allowing you to publish prerelease versions from feature branches while keeping stable releases on main.

Configuration

{
  "branches": [
    "main",
    {"name": "next", "prerelease": true},
    {"name": "beta", "prerelease": true},
    {"name": "alpha", "prerelease": true}
  ],
  "plugins": [
    "@semantic-release/commit-analyzer",
    "@semantic-release/release-notes-generator",
    "@semantic-release/npm",
    "@semantic-release/github"
  ]
}

How Prerelease Versions Work

Each branch produces different version numbers:

Branch	Example Version	npm Tag
main	1.2.0	latest
next	1.3.0-next.1	next
beta	1.3.0-beta.1	beta
alpha	1.3.0-alpha.1	alpha

Distribution Tags

When publishing to npm, each branch publishes under its own distribution tag. Users install specific channels with:

npm install my-package            # latest (main)
npm install my-package@next       # next channel
npm install my-package@beta       # beta channel

Channel vs. Prerelease

• channel controls the npm dist-tag used for publishing
• prerelease adds a prerelease identifier to the version number

When prerelease is set to true, the branch name is used as the identifier. You can also set it to a custom string like "rc" to get versions like 1.3.0-rc.1.

Promotion Flow

Features flow through branches: alpha -> beta -> next -> main. When you merge next into main, semantic-release creates a stable release from the prerelease version.