cargo-governor

Machine-First, LLM-Ready, CI/CD-Native release automation tool for Rust Cargo workspaces.

Overview

cargo-governor is a command-line tool that automates the release process for Rust projects. It provides two main commands:

owners — Declarative crate ownership management
release — Automated version bumping, changelog generation, and publishing

Features

Owners

Declarative Configuration: Define owners in Cargo.toml metadata
Group Management: Create logical owner groups reusable across packages
Workspace Inheritance: Default owners with package-level overrides
Sync & Validate: Synchronize with crates.io and check for drift

Release

Semantic Versioning: Automatic version bump detection from conventional commits
Changelog Generation: Automatic changelog updates with commit categorization
Workspace Support: Multi-crate workspaces with dependency ordering
CI/CD Native: JSON output, exit codes, GitHub Actions integration
Dry Run Mode: Preview changes without executing

Installation

cargo install cargo-governor

Then authenticate with crates.io once:

cargo login

The token is stored in ~/.cargo/credentials.toml and used automatically by cargo-governor.

Commands

Owners Commands

# Show computed owner list
cargo-governor owners show

# Sync with crates.io
cargo-governor owners sync

# Check for drift
cargo-governor owners check

# Dry run
cargo-governor owners sync --dry-run

Release Commands

# Analyze commits and recommend version bump
cargo-governor release analyze

# Plan the release (shows order and what will be published)
cargo-governor release plan

# Bump versions and create commit/tag
cargo-governor release bump

# Full release pipeline
cargo-governor release publish

# Dry run to preview
cargo-governor release publish --dry-run

Configuration

Add to your Cargo.toml:

Workspace-level defaults

[workspace.metadata.governor.owners]
default_users = ["org-bot"]

[workspace.metadata.governor.owners.groups]
core = ["alice", "github:myorg:core-team"]
maintainers = ["bob", "carol", "github:myorg:maintainers"]

Package-level configuration

[package.metadata.governor.owners]
users = ["alice", "bob"]
teams = ["github:myorg:core-team"]

[package.metadata.governor.owners.groups]
inherit = ["core", "maintainers"]

JSON Output

For CI/CD integration, use JSON output:

cargo-governor release analyze --format json

Response format:

{
  "success": true,
  "command": "analyze",
  "result": {
    "current_version": "0.1.6",
    "recommended_bump": "minor",
    "new_version": "0.2.0",
    "confidence": 0.95,
    "breaking_changes": [],
    "features": [
      {
        "commit_hash": "abc123",
        "message": "feat: add new feature"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Conventional Commits

Version bump detection follows conventional commits:

feat: → minor bump
fix: → patch bump
feat!: or BREAKING CHANGE: → major bump

Examples:

feat(api): add new endpoint
fix: resolve memory leak
feat!: redesign API (breaking)

CI/CD Integration

GitHub Actions

- name: Release
  run: cargo-governor release publish

Note: No CARGO_REGISTRY_TOKEN needed — cargo publish uses the token from cargo login.

Auto-detection

cargo-governor automatically detects CI environments:

Non-interactive mode (no prompts)
JSON output by default
Meaningful exit codes

Exit Codes

Code	Meaning
0	Success
1	General error
10	Git error
11	Registry error
13	Pre-publish check failed

License

MIT OR Apache-2.0

cargo-governor 1.2.0