Can't make Scenario 1 of nx release work properly

[nkalinov]

I think I have a fairly simple/basic release needs and want to use nx release for it.
I have a lib (custom plugin) in libs/nx-plugin.
I want to build, version and publish it and have the following requirements:

• Source package.json should be updated (So we're looking at Scenario 1 with priority)
• Use conventionalCommits: true
• Generate project-level changelog
• Publish to npm should contain the updated package.json and CHANGELOG.md

Relevant nx.json props:

  "release": {
    "projectsRelationship": "independent",
    "changelog": {
      "projectChangelogs": true,
      "automaticFromRef": true
    },
    "version": {
      "conventionalCommits": true,
      "generatorOptions": {
        "fallbackCurrentVersionResolver": "disk"
      },
      "preVersionCommand": "npx nx run-many -t build"
    }
  },

Relevant library project.json props:

    "build": {
       "options": {
          "outputPath": "libs/nx-plugin/dist"
      }
    },
    "nx-release-publish": {
      "options": {
        "packageRoot": "libs/nx-plugin/dist"
      }
    },

Having the above in mind I will outline how each scenario from https://nx.dev/recipes/nx-release/updating-version-references falls apart:

Scenario 1 a)

Source package.json is updated but preVersionCommand built the dist folder with the old package.json. As a result, the published package.json contains the previous version.

Scenario 1 b)

As a follow up to 1 a) I saw this comment which recommends to use the subcommands and run build after version.

1. nx release version
2. nx run-many -t build
3. nx release changelog
4. nx release publish

This is almost what I need except that nx release changelog doesn't seem to work with conventional commits when used directly. It requires a argument and complains with An explicit target version must be specified when using the changelog command directly.

Scenario 1 c)

If we remove this part

"nx-release-publish": {
      "options": {
        "packageRoot": "libs/nx-plugin/dist"
      }
    },

we have source package.json updated and published with the new version but the published artifacts contain the whole project including the source files.

Scenario 2

Doesn't work for me as I prefer to have visibility of the version in the source package.json We do not have a strict requirement about this but I do not understand why I wouldn't need the "main" package.json be up-to-date. Looks confusing to me, surely to other team members. Can someone elaborate why you would ever prefer this?

Scenario 3

That's not even a scenario but more of an optimization that you can benefit from if you're using pnpm (which we are not).

[nkalinov]

So I think I'm leaning towards a custom executor which is mostly copy-paste of packages/nx/src/command-line/release/release.ts with some preconfigurations and a build of the projects after versioning and before publish.
Tagging @fahslaj and @JamesHenry who are the contributors to the abovementioned script.
Would you have better ideas or insights whether some of those issues are going to be addressed in the nx release script itself?