Backporting Changes

Sometimes, you may need to backport changes to a previous versions for important bug fixes or security patches. Changesets can also be configured to make this process easier.

Setting Up

Releases for previous versions require a separate branch for the version. For example, to backport to 1.x versions, you can create a v1 branch based on the git tag of the last 1.x release.

$ git checkout -b v1 v1.2.3

Then, update the baseBranch option with the branch name. This allows the add command to properly detect the changed packages.

.changeset/config.json

{
  "baseBranch": "v1"
}

If you have set up CI to automatically run version and publish, make sure to allow running the workflow for this branch too.

Also ensure the publish command is passed a custom --tag as we do not want backport releases to be tagged as latest on npm.

$ changeset publish --tag previous

Remember to set a tag

This is REALLY IMPORTANT because if you do not include a tag, installing your package will default to the backport version, which is not what you want.

Commit the changes and push the branch to your remote.

$ git add .
$ git commit -m "Set up backport branch"
$ git push -u origin v1

Releasing Backport Versions

When you want to release a backport version, you can run the version and publish commands as usual. See the Versioning and Publishing guide for the usual flow.

As mentioned above, remember to pass a custom --tag if you're running the publish command manually.