Backmerge on feature branches

[mehdihadeli]

Hi @saitho, Is it possible back merge develop branch on feature branches? Because naming for branches doesn't support regex (like: feat/**), we can't do this now. For example:

- - '@saithodev/semantic-release-backmerge'
  - branches:
    - from: main
      to: dev
    - from: dev
      to: feat/**
    backmergeStrategy: merge
    mergeMode: ours 
    clearWorkspace: false

[saitho]

Hi @mehdihadeli

Backmerging into one feature branch named "feature/my-feature" should work with the current implementation. Merging into multiple branches using RegEx is not possible. Right now I am hesistant to implement this:

semantic-release itself is not compatible with workflows that require backmerging – moreover they strictly advertise a single branch concept. As GitFlow is a wide-spread concept, this plugin tries to provide basic means to use it anyways, using hooks in semantic-release that were not designed for such actions.

Depending on the state of the branches backmerges may fail, causing the entire semantic-release process to fail, leaving you with a ready release that was not backmerged correctly, red pipeline and possibly steps after the release process that could not run.

Backmerging into multiple branches via a RegEx (e.g. all feature branches; some of them may be weeks or months behind and not merge/rebase properly) may cause such issues that would probably be more annoying than helpful.

I am not completely against it, just thinking about the risks. 😅

[mehdihadeli]

Yes, I agree. What about using feature branch in merge with -Xours command, it helps out for preserving feature branches changes that are not in develop yet. About feature/my-feature, should I define all of my feature branches one by one in the config file? For preventing fail whole of sematnic-release process, maybe it is better we do back merge in a separate GitHub action after running semantic-release. What do you think?