# Releases & Health | Sentry for Cloud Functions for Firebase

A release is a version of your code that is deployed to an [environment](https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/javascript/guides/firebase/configuration/environments.md). When you give Sentry information about your releases, you can:

* Determine issues and regressions introduced in a new release
* Predict which commit caused an issue and who is likely responsible
* Resolve issues by including the issue number in your commit message
* Receive email notifications when your code gets deployed

Additionally, releases are used for applying [source maps](https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/javascript/sourcemaps.md) to minified JavaScript to view original, untransformed source code.

## [Bind the Version](https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/javascript/guides/firebase/configuration/releases.md#bind-the-version)

Include a release ID (often called a "version") when you initialize the SDK.

There are some release name restrictions and conventions to be aware of. [Learn more about naming releases](https://docs.sentry.io/product/releases/naming-releases.md).

Releases can also be auto-created by different systems—for example, when uploading a source map, or by some clients when an event that is tagged with a release is ingested. Therefore, it's important to set the release name when building and deploying your application. Learn more in our [Releases](https://docs.sentry.io/platform-redirect.md?next=/configuration/releases/) documentation.

## [Setting a Release](https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/javascript/guides/firebase/configuration/releases.md#setting-a-release)

```javascript
Sentry.init({
  release: "my-project-name@2.3.12",
});
```

A common way to do this with JavaScript in a Node/npm environment would be to use the [`process.env.npm_package_version`](https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/scripts#packagejson-vars) like so:

```javascript
Sentry.init({
  release: "my-project-name@" + process.env.npm_package_version,
});
```

How you make the release name (or version) available to your code is up to you. For example, you could use an environment variable that is set during the build process or during initial start-up.

Setting the release name tags each event with that release name. We recommend that you tell Sentry about a new release before sending events with that release name, as this will unlock a few more features. Learn more in our [Releases](https://docs.sentry.io/product/releases.md) documentation.

If you don't tell Sentry about a new release, Sentry will automatically create a release entity in the system the first time it sees an event with that release ID.

After configuring your SDK, you can install a repository integration or manually supply Sentry with your own commit metadata. Read our documentation about [setting up releases](https://docs.sentry.io/product/releases/setup.md) for further information about integrations, associating commits, and telling Sentry when deploying releases.

## [Release Health](https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/javascript/guides/firebase/configuration/releases.md#release-health)

Monitor the [health of releases](https://docs.sentry.io/product/releases/health.md) by observing user adoption, usage of the application, percentage of [crashes](https://docs.sentry.io/product/releases/health.md#crashes), and [session data](https://docs.sentry.io/product/releases/health.md#sessions). Release health will provide insight into the impact of crashes and bugs as it relates to user experience, and reveal trends with each new issue through the [Release Details](https://docs.sentry.io/product/releases/release-details.md) graphs and filters.

In order to monitor release health, the SDK sends session data.

### [Sessions](https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/javascript/guides/firebase/configuration/releases.md#sessions)

A session represents the interaction between the user and the application. Sessions contain a timestamp, a status (if the session was OK or if it crashed), and are always linked to a release. Most Sentry SDKs can manage sessions automatically.

Release health on the server side is tracked in two different modes:

* Single sessions that represent a node process; for example, a CLI application. In single sessions mode, the SDK creates a session for every node process. A session is started on `init` of the SDK, and ends when the process is exited.
* Session aggregates represent requests. In session aggregates mode, sessions will be recorded differently and will represent the lifetime of requests. Sessions will automatically be aggregated for HTTP requests in your application.

We mark the session as crashed if an *unhandled error* reached our `errorHandler` middleware.

We mark the session as an error if the SDK captures an event that contains an exception (this includes manually captured exceptions).

By default, the SDK is sending sessions, to disable this configure the `httpIntegration` with the `trackIncomingRequestsAsSessions` option set to `false`.

```javascript
Sentry.init({
  integrations: [
    Sentry.httpIntegration({
      trackIncomingRequestsAsSessions: false, // default: true
    }),
  ],
});
```

A session is automatically created for every node process by the `processSessionIntegration` which is configured by default.

See [Session APIs](https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/javascript/guides/firebase/apis.md#sessions) for more information on how to manually capturing sessions.
