Non-default Branch - Error creating Pull Request: Reference update failed

[tysonnero-ccm]

Environment details

• Programming language: yml
• OS: ubuntu-latest
• Package version: v4

Steps to reproduce

1. Create a repo with two branches main and release.
2. Set release as the default branch.
3. Create a release workflow similar like

   name: Release
   
   on:
     push:
       branches:
         - main
   
   permissions:
     contents: write
     pull-requests: write
   
   jobs:
     release:
       name: 'Release'
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
         - uses: google-github-actions/release-please-action@v4
           with:
             token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
             release-type: node
             target-branch: main
   

4. Create a branch off of release, make a change, push a commit, and merge a PR into release.
5. Create a PR and merge into main.
6. Navigate to the Actions tab and open the workflow run for the release.
7. Click on the Release job and expand the relevant step.

Expected Results

When looking at the logs, you should see Successfully created branch at and the workflow should have successfully run

Actual Results

The logs display the following errors and the workflow fails:

Error when creating branch
RequestError [HttpError]: Error creating Pull Request: Reference update failed
422

[tysonnero-ccm]

Turns out this has nothing to due with a non-default branch. It's probably an issue with some repo setup. The create reference GitHub API doesn't return error details, so there is no way to know the issue from the response.