The tool does not detect whether a release already exists

[mcmire]

When this tool assigns a new version to the project, it takes the current version as specified in package.json and increments it. It also uses the same version in the name of the release branch.

This works fine if there are no releases in review when the release branch is created. But what if someone has already created a release and somebody else tries to make a new release? Then the version assigned will be the same as the existing one, and when the user tries to push the branch, they will receive an error.

The tool should look for and consider remote release branches when assigning the new version.

[mikesposito]

Perhaps in case there is indeed a remote release branch already, the new release branch should be based on the already-existing remote instead of main?

Let's say there is an origin/release/100 branch already (with relative Release 100.0.0 PR open): running the tool locally should result in a new branch release/101 based on origin/release/100.

This would avoid releasing the same packages twice, keeping releases in a queue. This behavior would then be ignored when the user is already on a release branch (#137)

[mcmire]

Ah yes, good point about basing the new branch off the existing branch. I'd imagine we'd probably want to use the latest existing release branch in case there are multiple.

[desi]

@mcmire and @desi this is being considered for Q2-24

[mcmire]

We discussed this today in review and @mikesposito's solution sounds like it would work fine. There is a risk that if the new release branch is based on the existing branch, the author of the second branch might merge theirs into the first accidentally, and either that would be surprising or the release number would increment by 2 instead of 1. It may be worth it to write up some documentation to address this scenario and offer guidance, but that may be out of scope for this ticket. Regardless it seems we have a path forward.