release-please-rc-flow

Releases go through a soak: we snapshot main into a release branch, validate that branch, and only then cut a stable release — all without blocking work on main. Automated with release-please.

How a release works

1. Cut — Actions ▸ Cut release branch ▸ Run workflow. This creates release/<date> from main and opens a release PR on it. That branch is now frozen: nothing merged to main afterwards affects it.
2. Soak — deploy/validate the release/<date> branch. Meanwhile main stays open for everyone else.
3. Patch — found a problem? Land the fix on main first (a normal fix: PR), then cherry-pick it onto the release branch via a backport PR. Backports must be PRs (the release branches enforce it), so the fix shows up in the release notes.
4. Publish — when soak passes, merge the release PR. That cuts the vX.Y.Z tag and a GitHub Release with notes grouped by type. Then squash-merge the auto-opened "merge back into main" PR — do this promptly; it's what advances main to the released version. Merging it also deletes the release branch (the tag is the permanent snapshot).

Conventions

• Title PRs with Conventional Commits — feat:, fix:, docs:, … A check enforces it and adds a matching type: label. feat → minor, fix → patch; feat!:/BREAKING CHANGE: → minor (pre-1.0).
• Everything is squash-merged, so the PR title becomes the commit release-please reads.

Knowing which release shipped your PR

After a release, every PR it included is labeled released: X.Y.Z with a comment linking the release, and is listed under its type (Features, Bug Fixes, …) in the release notes.

Hotfixing an already-shipped version

The release branch is gone after merge-back, but the tag is the exact snapshot. To patch a shipped version: Cut release branch with from: vX.Y.Z to recreate it, then open a backport PR onto the recreated branch for the X.Y.Z+1 patch — nothing from main comes along.

A fix you backport appears in both the release it shipped in and the next release's notes — it's two commits (the main original and the backport). That double-listing is expected.