fix(ci): explicitly create tags/releases

[timcogan]

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Chores
  • Improved release workflow to create GitHub Release/tag as draft upfront before uploading artifacts, ensuring proper tag validation and commit placement.
  • Updated release documentation and process to reflect the new draft-first approach with automatic final publication.
  • Enhanced workflow state tracking and error handling for tag management.

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No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: 30175cd0-bdcb-4717-8f9e-dff97325aa15

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between d9ec935 and a97546c.

📒 Files selected for processing (3)

• .github/workflows/release.yml
• RELEASE.md
• dist-workspace.toml

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The release workflow now pre-creates a draft GitHub Release and tag via a new create-release job before building/uploading artifacts. The plan job computes and exports release metadata (release_state, tag_exists), validates tag placement against the current commit SHA, and fails early if the tag exists on a different commit. The dist-workspace.toml disables cargo-dist's automatic release creation. Release documentation updated to reflect this new workflow sequence.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Summary
Release Workflow Infrastructure .github/workflows/release.yml	Added new create-release job to pre-create draft releases and tags. Enhanced plan job to compute and export release_state and tag_exists, with validation logic to detect tag misplacement across commits. Updated job dependencies for build-local-artifacts, build-global-artifacts, and host to require create-release completion.
Distribution Configuration dist-workspace.toml	Set create-release = false in [dist] section to delegate release creation to GitHub Actions workflow instead of cargo-dist.
Release Documentation RELEASE.md	Updated release lifecycle documentation to reflect draft release creation-first approach and clarified retry behavior for existing draft releases.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 3 (Moderate) | ⏱️ ~20 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• ci(release): automate GitHub releases from Cargo.toml version bumps #80: Both PRs modify the same GitHub Actions release workflow to change how releases/tags are detected/created and expose release-related job outputs.
• Add release workflow #6: Both PRs modify the release workflow and distribution configuration files (.github/workflows/release.yml and dist-workspace.toml).

Poem

🐰 A draft release now hops forth,
Before the artifacts take their worth,
Tags validated, commits aligned,
Release state and metadata assigned,
cargo-dist steps back with grace,
As the workflow finds its place! ✨

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Description check	⚠️ Warning	No pull request description was provided by the author, missing all required sections from the template including Summary, Testing, and Checklist.	Add a complete pull request description following the template: include a Summary explaining the changes, Testing section with completed checklist items and any manual testing performed, and the required Checklist with all items addressed.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title 'fix(ci): explicitly create tags/releases' clearly describes the main change - implementing explicit tag/release creation in CI workflows, which aligns with the primary modifications in release.yml, dist-workspace.toml, and RELEASE.md documentation.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch fix/explicit-tag-release

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[timcogan]

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