Publish the most recent GitHub Release when several share a name

[AliSoftware]

What does it do?

Fixes point 1 of AINFRA-2725: make publish_github_release publish the latest matching GitHub Release rather than the first one the API happens to list.

The bug

publish_release found the release to publish with:

releases = client.releases(repository)
release = releases.find { |r| r.name == name }

.find returns the first match in whatever order the GitHub API listed them, which is not part of the API contract. And a repo can legitimately host several releases sharing a name: every finalize_release run creates its own draft, so re-running it for a version — as we do when smoke-testing turns up a crash — leaves two drafts named e.g. 25.1, targeting different commits.

That is what caused the WCiOS 25.1 incident: the draft from the first finalize_release run got published, so GitHub created the 25.1 tag on the older commit. The 25.1.1 hotfix then branched off that tag and silently dropped the crash fix that had actually shipped in 25.1.

The two releases involved, for reference:

id	name	target	draft	created_at
351929162	25.1	dbd800a (stale)	no — this is the one that got published	2026-07-10T06:18:29Z
352002205	25.1	558354d (correct)	yes, still	2026-07-10T09:27:00Z

The fix

All matching releases are now collected and the most recently created one is published; staler ones are left untouched. find_release — which looks a release up by tag instead of by name, and backs upload_github_release_assets — shares the new matching_releases helper and gains the same guarantee.

Two non-fatal UI.important warnings were added so the situation is visible in the CI logs: one when more than one release matches the name, and one when the release being published turns out not to be a draft anymore.

Why sort on id and not created_at

The issue suggested sorting on the creation date, but created_at is not trustworthy here: GitHub rewrites a release's created_at to the date of the commit it targets once that release is published. You can see it in the table above — the published 25.1 reports 06:18:29Z, which is exactly dbd800a's commit date, and the 25.1.2 draft's created_at moved from 11:12:23Z to 10:57:28Z (its commit date) the moment it was published.

Since a commit always precedes the release object targeting it, publishing shifts a release's created_at earlier. So if finalize_release runs twice with no new commit in between and the second draft is published, its created_at collapses back to the old commit date — making it sort as older than the stale draft, and a re-run would then pick the stale one. Release ids have no such problem: GitHub assigns them in increasing order as releases are created, drafts included.

Checklist before requesting a review

• Run bundle exec rubocop to test for code style violations and recommendations.
• Add Unit Tests (aka specs/*_spec.rb) if applicable.
• Run bundle exec rspec to run the whole test suite and ensure all your tests pass.
• Make sure you added an entry in the CHANGELOG.md file.
• If applicable, add an entry in the MIGRATION.md file — n/a, no breaking change.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[mokagio]

I passed this through Opus 5 and GPT 5.6 and they both agree there could be a hole in the logic as it is.

Consider this scenario, admittedly unlikely, but still...

1. Re-running finalization can create multiple drafts with the same tag_name.
2. One draft is eventually published and becomes the release associated with the tag.
3. Another, newer draft may remain.
4. A later asset upload or retry should update the published release...
5. ...but the highest-ID rule instead selects the leftover draft.

I don't know how likely it is to upload assets or retry a release step after having already published a GH release, but I'm mindful of Murphy's Law.

Opus' suggestion

find_release picks the newest draft over the release that actually owns the tag

The name-based path is right; flagging that the tag-based one needs one more condition.

matching_releases(...).last returns the highest id regardless of draft, and for a tag lookup that isn't the same question as "most recently created". A git tag can back only one published release, so when a non-draft match exists it is the release for that tag — a higher-id draft sharing the same tag_name is a leftover, not a successor.

Not hypothetical: it's the state WCiOS is in right now, post-incident.

id	tag_name	draft
351929162	25.1	no — published, owns the 25.1 tag
352002205	25.1	yes — never cleaned up

Run upload_github_release_assets(version: '25.1') against that repo today and this branch resolves to 352002205, the draft, every time. The artifacts land on a release nobody can see, existing_assets is computed against the wrong release so replace_existing silently replaces nothing, and the html_url returned to the caller is an untagged-352002205 link.

Before this PR the outcome was whatever order the API happened to list, so this isn't a regression. But the PR's point is turning an unlucky coin flip into a guarantee, and here it guarantees the wrong side — in precisely the repo state the PR exists to survive.

Suggestion, prefer a published match and fall back to the newest draft:

def find_release(repository:, version:)
  matches = matching_releases(repository: repository) { |candidate| candidate.tag_name == version }
  release = matches.reject { |candidate| candidate[:draft] }.last || matches.last
  return release unless release.nil?

  release_for_tag(repository: repository, version: version)
end

Two notes on that snippet:

• candidate[:draft] rather than &:draft deliberately — Sawyer::Resource#method_missing raises NoMethodError for fields the payload doesn't carry, and spec/github_helper_spec.rb:627 builds a stub with no draft key that reaches client.releases at line 644. Hash access returns nil there instead, and it matches the release[:id] style already used in matching_releases.
• The alternative is folding it into the sort key (sort_by { |r| [r[:draft] ? 0 : 1, r[:id]] }), but I'd keep matching_releases a dumb "filter, order by creation" primitive and let each caller state its own tie-break — publish_release genuinely wants the opposite, highest id whether draft or not.

Either way, worth pinning with a test: published + newer draft on the same tag, asserting which wins. Today that behaviour is incidental, and it's exactly what the next person refactoring matching_releases would flip without noticing.

Sibling question on the same repo state: publish_github_release would now pick draft 352002205 and update_release(draft: false) it while tag 25.1 already exists on 351929162. Do you know whether GitHub 422s there or quietly attaches a second release to the tag? If it errors, that's a raw Octokit exception at the final step of a release. The new "not a draft, but has already been published" warning doesn't cover it, since the highest-id match is a draft.

[AliSoftware]

Good catch, and not hypothetical at all — I reproduced it before fixing. Stubbing the client with exactly what the API returns for woocommerce-ios today (published 351929162 and leftover draft 352002205, both tag_name: "25.1") and running the real code path:

>>> upload_release_assets('25.1') resolved to:
    https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-ios/releases/tag/untagged-352002205

So you're right that it guaranteed the wrong side, in precisely the repo state this PR exists to survive. Fixed in c9cacaa, with your suggested shape:

matches = matching_releases(repository: repository) { |candidate| candidate.tag_name == version }
release = matches.reject { |candidate| candidate[:draft] }.last || matches.last

I kept the tie-break at the call site rather than folding it into matching_releases, for the reason you gave: the two lookups are asking different questions. For a name lookup "newest wins" is right, since names are free-form labels and the latest draft targets the newest commit. For a tag lookup it isn't — a tag can back only one published release, so a non-draft match is the release for that tag. The fallback to the newest draft is preserved for the case where no published release claims the tag yet, which is what PCiOS relies on when uploading assets to an unpublished release.

Pinned with a regression test using those real ids, and I verified it fails against the previous logic rather than just passing against the new one:

expected: ("published-api-url")
     got: ("draft-api-url")

Also updated the CHANGELOG, whose last sentence ("picks the most recent match too") was made inaccurate by this change.

One correction to the quoted rationale, for the record: it states that Sawyer::Resource#method_missing raises NoMethodError for fields the payload doesn't carry. I checked, and it returns nil instead — so &:draft would have worked too. candidate[:draft] is still the better choice for consistency with the release[:id] in matching_releases, just not for that reason.

On your sibling question

Do you know whether GitHub 422s there or quietly attaches a second release to the tag?

I don't, and I'd rather flag that than guess: I have not verified it empirically, and doing so would mean publishing a real draft against an existing tag on a real repo. The expectation is that GitHub rejects it, since tag_name has to be unique among published releases and the draft here points at a different commit than the one the tag already resolves to — but treat that as reasoning, not as an observed result.

Worth noting the blast radius is small either way: it needs a published release and a newer draft sharing a name, which is the leftover state a re-run of finalization leaves behind. If it does 422, it surfaces as a raw Octokit error at the last step of a release — loud and pointing at a genuinely broken state that needs a human, rather than silently tagging the wrong commit, which is what got us here. Happy to open a follow-up to catch it and re-raise as a UI.user_error! with a pointer to the duplicate drafts, if you think it's worth pre-empting.

[mokagio]

Pinned with a regression test using those real ids

Love it!

Worth noting the blast radius is small either way: it needs a published release and a newer draft sharing a name, which is the leftover state a re-run of finalization leaves behind. If it does 422, it surfaces as a raw Octokit error at the last step of a release

All things considered, I think this is okay. Not worth additional complexity to handle the very edge case.

[Copilot]

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 4 changed files in this pull request and generated no new comments.

Suppressed comments (2)

spec/github_helper_spec.rb:742

• This spec doesn't actually verify the new deterministic selection when the API lists matching releases in an arbitrary order: the stubbed releases array already has the newest release first, so the test would still pass with the old .find implementation. To make this a real regression test, return the stale release first and ensure the helper still uploads to the higher-id release.

    it 'uses the most recently created release when several share the same tag' do
      stale_release = sawyer_resource_stub(id: 1, url: 'stale-api-url', html_url: 'stale-html-url', tag_name: test_version, draft: true)
      latest_release = sawyer_resource_stub(id: 2, url: 'latest-api-url', html_url: 'latest-html-url', tag_name: test_version, draft: true)

      allow(client).to receive(:releases).with(test_repo).and_return([latest_release, stale_release])
      expect(client).not_to receive(:release_for_tag)

lib/fastlane/plugin/wpmreleasetoolkit/actions/common/publish_github_release_action.rb:45

• The details heredoc inserts a line containing a single space via #{' '}. This is unnecessary (a blank line can be written directly) and can introduce trailing-whitespace noise in the output/help text (and may be flagged by style checks as redundant interpolation).

          If several GitHub Releases share the same `name`, the most recently created one is published,
          as it is the one targeting the latest commit of the release branch.
          #{' '}
          (Multiple releases can exist with the same `name` when the release finalization automation
          is run more than once for the same version, each run creating its own draft.)

[mokagio]

New month, new quota. Get to work Copilot!

[mokagio]

Good to merge. Ideally including the stacked #764 with the regression test refinement.

[dangermattic]

🚫	Layout/TrailingWhitespace: Trailing whitespace detected.