🚀 Crawl4AI v0.7.2: CI/CD & Dependency Optimization Update

July 25, 2025 • 3 min read

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This release introduces automated CI/CD pipelines for seamless releases and optimizes dependencies for a lighter, more efficient package.

🎯 What's New

🔄 Automated Release Pipeline

• GitHub Actions CI/CD: Automated PyPI and Docker Hub releases on tag push
• Multi-platform Docker images: Support for both AMD64 and ARM64 architectures
• Version consistency checks: Ensures tag, package, and Docker versions align
• Automated release notes: GitHub releases created automatically

📦 Dependency Optimization

• Moved sentence-transformers to optional dependencies: Significantly reduces default installation size
• Lighter Docker images: Optimized Dockerfile for faster builds and smaller images
• Better dependency management: Core vs. optional dependencies clearly separated

🏗️ CI/CD Pipeline

The new automated release process ensures consistent, reliable releases:

:::yaml
# Trigger releases with a simple tag
git tag v0.7.2
git push origin v0.7.2

# Automatically:
# ✅ Validates version consistency
# ✅ Builds and publishes to PyPI
# ✅ Builds multi-platform Docker images
# ✅ Pushes to Docker Hub with proper tags
# ✅ Creates GitHub release

💾 Lighter Installation

Default installation is now significantly smaller:

:::bash
# Core installation (smaller, faster)
pip install crawl4ai==0.7.2

# With ML features (includes sentence-transformers)
pip install crawl4ai[transformer]==0.7.2

# Full installation
pip install crawl4ai[all]==0.7.2

🐳 Docker Improvements

Enhanced Docker support with multi-platform images:

:::bash
# Pull the latest version
docker pull unclecode/crawl4ai:0.7.2
docker pull unclecode/crawl4ai:latest

# Available tags:
# - unclecode/crawl4ai:0.7.2 (specific version)
# - unclecode/crawl4ai:0.7 (minor version)
# - unclecode/crawl4ai:0 (major version)
# - unclecode/crawl4ai:latest

🔧 Technical Details

Dependency Changes

• sentence-transformers moved from required to optional dependencies
• Reduces default installation by ~500MB
• No impact on functionality when transformer features aren't needed

CI/CD Configuration

• GitHub Actions workflows for automated releases
• Version validation before publishing
• Parallel PyPI and Docker Hub deployments
• Automatic tagging strategy for Docker images

🚀 Installation

:::bash
pip install crawl4ai==0.7.2

No breaking changes - direct upgrade from v0.7.0 or v0.7.1.

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Questions? Issues? - GitHub: github.com/unclecode/crawl4ai - Discord: discord.gg/crawl4ai - Twitter: @unclecode

P.S. The new CI/CD pipeline will make future releases faster and more reliable. Thanks for your patience as we improve our release process!