fix: update release workflow to respect branch protection

[markussiebert]

Updates the release workflow to work with branch protection rules:

• Modify create-release workflow to create PR instead of direct push to main
• Add tag-on-merge workflow to create tags when release PRs are merged
• Ensures release process works with branch protection rules

This fixes the issue where the create-release workflow was failing due to protected branch restrictions.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR updates the release workflow to work with branch protection rules by moving from a direct push model to a pull request model. Instead of pushing directly to main, the create-release workflow now creates a release branch and PR, and a new tag-on-merge workflow handles tag creation and release publishing when the PR is merged.

Changes:

• Modified create-release workflow to create a PR instead of direct push to main
• Added new tag-on-merge workflow to create tags and trigger releases when release PRs merge
• Added pull-requests: write permission to create-release workflow

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 6 comments.

File	Description
.github/workflows/create-release.yml	Modified to create release branch and PR instead of direct push; added PR creation logic
.github/workflows/tag-on-merge.yml	New workflow that triggers on PR merge to create tags, releases, and trigger release workflow

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

.github/workflows/create-release.yml:96

• These steps (Create GitHub Release and Trigger release workflow) should be removed from this workflow. They are attempting to create a release and trigger the release workflow before the PR is merged, but the tag doesn't exist yet at this point. The tag will only be created when the PR is merged by the tag-on-merge workflow. This logic belongs in the tag-on-merge.yml workflow, where it's already implemented (lines 45-57 of that file). Creating the release here will result in duplicate releases being created.

      - name: Create GitHub Release
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        run: |
          # Create GitHub release using the changelog content
          gh release create ${{ steps.version.outputs.new_tag }} \
            --title "${{ steps.version.outputs.new_tag }}" \
            --notes-file /tmp/release_notes.md

      - name: Trigger release workflow on tag
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        run: |
          # Manually trigger the 'release' workflow on the new tag ref
          # Using workflow_dispatch with ref to run on the tag
          gh workflow run release.yml --ref ${{ steps.version.outputs.new_tag }}

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