csharp-sdk/.github/skills/shared-resources/release-branches.md

Release Branches

Shared reference for release skills. Describes the branch roles used by the release workflow and the rules each skill follows for selecting a branch and looking up the previous release.

Branch roles

Branch	Purpose	CI behavior
main	Next-MAJOR preview/development line	Nightly cron build → GitHub Packages
release/{MAJOR}.x	Long-lived servicing branch for a shipped MAJOR	Every push → GitHub Packages
release-{version}	Short-lived release preparation branch	Built by PR CI; no package publishing

Official NuGet.org publishes happen only when a GitHub Release is created from a branch's tag.

Selecting a source/base branch (prepare-release Step 1)

1. List candidate branches via: gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/branches --paginate --jq '[.[] | select(.name == "main" or (.name | startswith("release/"))) | .name]'
2. Present the list to the user. Default selection: main.
3. The selected branch drives:
   • Previous-release lookup (see below).
   • The branch on which the candidate version is read from src/Directory.Build.props.
   • The commit range from which PRs are collected.
   • The --base of the PR created at the end of the skill.

Previous-release tag lookup

• On main: most recent published release globally (use gh release list --exclude-drafts --limit 50 and pick the highest semver). No MAJOR filter.
• On release/{MAJOR}.x: most recent published release whose tag matches v{MAJOR}.*. Drafts are excluded.

This is purely a baseline-selection rule. It does not change the breaking-change policy. See the versioning docs for the policy.

Work-branch naming

Prepare-release work branches are named release-{version} (flat, hyphen-separated):

• release-2.0.0-preview.1
• release-1.3.1
• release-2.0.0

Hyphens in prerelease versions are valid in git branch names.