npm / release-it

release-it

What changed in release-it 19 to 21, from its official release notes, upgrade guides and advisories. Sources checked 2026-10-18.

7 breaking7 new APIs and options7 behavior and defaults1 tooling16 fixes and other

See which of these apply to your code, ranked, in your agent:

npx @unstale/cli init

release-it 2118 changes

GitLab support now includes proxy environment variables.
21.1.0release notes
Adds the gitlab.repoId option for configuring a GitLab repository ID.
21.0.0release notes

release-it logs in to npm automatically before interactive publishing.
21.1.0release notes
GitLab releases are pinned to the current commit.
21.0.0release notes

Schema $id values no longer include a fragment.
21.1.0release notes
Fixes version increments and coercion after the verkit migration, including coercion for verkit 0.4.
21.1.0release notes
Fixes the npm staging approval URL and prompt.
21.0.3release notes
Fixes a regression so --no-hooks skips all hooks.
21.0.1release notes
Fixes routing when a GitHub proxy is configured.
21.0.0release notes
Fixes handling of custom registry arguments for npm.
21.0.0release notes
Fixes workspace configuration resolution when publishing to npm.
21.0.0release notes
GitLab repository IDs can be numeric.
21.0.0release notes
The command exits successfully when no release version is available.
21.0.0release notes
Fixes shell caching and working tree detection.
21.0.0release notes

Prints the staged-packages approval URL after stage publish so developers can access the approval message.
20.2.0release notes
Uses the draft flow for immutable releases that include assets.
20.1.0release notes

Publishing interactively under --only-version allows passkey 2FA to work.
20.1.0release notes
The release body is an empty string instead of null.
20.1.0release notes
The types now allow false as an npm config value.
20.0.1release notes
Fixes the guard for write: false in npm.bump.
20.0.0release notes
Leading slashes are removed from owner.
20.0.0release notes

HTTP 403 responses are now considered a resource-alive response.
19.1.0release notes
npm config environment variable warnings are removed.
19.1.0release notes
release-it ignores .npmrc.
19.1.0release notes

Adds an option to exit gracefully.
19.2.0release notes
Adds an NPM plugin config option to use a different package manager for publishing, such as Bun.
19.2.0release notes
Adds --workspaces=false to avoid the null/matches error.
19.1.0release notes

The getChangelog method was improved; the notes do not specify what changed.
19.2.2release notes
The commit prompt is improved.
19.2.1release notes
Uses --workspaces=false only with npm.
19.2.0release notes

An interactive shell is supported in non-CI mode for the 2FA flow.
19.1.0release notes