gitflow-release-publish

Git Flow Release — Publish

Pushes the local release branch to GitHub and opens a PR to master (production merge). The back-merge to develop happens later in gitflow-release-finish, after the master PR is merged — this ensures both branches share the same merge history and avoids conflicts caused by divergent commit SHAs.

Run gitflow-release-start first to create the branch and version commit.

Stop on any error — if any step fails unexpectedly, report the full error output to the user and do not proceed to the next step.

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Input

Ask the user for the version being released (e.g. 1.53.0). Store it in a shell variable and validate the format:

VERSION="<version>"
if ! [[ "$VERSION" =~ ^[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+$ ]]; then
  echo "Invalid version format. Must be N.N.N (e.g. 1.53.0, not v1.53.0)"
  exit 1
fi

Reject and re-prompt if invalid. Use $VERSION throughout all subsequent steps.

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Prerequisites check

Verify the GitHub CLI is installed:

gh --version

If not installed, stop and tell the user:

"GitHub CLI (gh) is not installed. Install it with brew install gh and authenticate with gh auth login first."

Verify the release branch exists locally:

git branch --list "release/$VERSION"

If it returns nothing, stop and tell the user:

"No local branch release/$VERSION found. Run gitflow-release-start with version $VERSION first."

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Step 1 — Push release branch

git push origin "release/$VERSION"

If this fails, stop and report the error.

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Step 2 — Open PR to master

Find the pipeline file name to reference in the PR body:

PIPELINE_FILE=$(ls azure-pipelines.yaml 2>/dev/null || ls azure-pipelines.yml 2>/dev/null || ls azure-pipeline.yaml 2>/dev/null || ls azure-pipeline.yml 2>/dev/null)

If neither file is found, use fallback with brief warning:

if [ -z "$PIPELINE_FILE" ]; then
  echo "WARNING: Pipeline file not found in current directory."
  PIPELINE_FILE="azure-pipeline.yaml"
fi

Open the production merge PR:

gh pr create \
  --base master \
  --head "release/$VERSION" \
  --title "Release $VERSION" \
  --body "## Release $VERSION

Bumps version to \`$VERSION\` in \`$PIPELINE_FILE\`.

### Checklist
- [ ] Version variables updated correctly in \`$PIPELINE_FILE\`
- [ ] CI passes on the release branch
- [ ] Reviewed and approved"

Capture the PR URL from the command output. Extract the PR number from the URL (the last path segment).

If this fails, stop and report the error.

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Done

Show the user the PR URL, then say:

"Master PR is open: $MASTER_PR_URL (#$MASTER_PR_NUMBER)

Once it's merged, run gitflow-release-finish with version $VERSION and master PR #$MASTER_PR_NUMBER. The back-merge to develop will be handled as part of the finish step."

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If something goes wrong

• Before the PR is merged: close the PR on GitHub, then delete the remote and local release branch:

  git push origin --delete "release/$VERSION"
  git branch -D "release/$VERSION"
  

  The release is fully undone with no impact on master or develop.