Clarity on provider publishing workflow for BDC

[YOU54F]

BDC provider publishing workflow clarification

From initial query in slack

Initial State

In our example repos for BDC, prior to uploading a provider contract,

we were using create-version-tag

However in our docs, we don't make mention of this.

• Publishing oas contracts page is here

• It doesn't support adding branches currently as part of the cURL call
• We don't make mention of creating a version tag.

The only mention of tags in the BDC guide is

• https://docs.pactflow.io/docs/bi-directional-contract-testing/provider#step-5-deploy-your-application

which directs users to pact-broker docs page on tags

• https://docs.pact.io/pact_broker/tags

Question: assuming this is the correct step, should we advise in the docs, with a suggestion that this will be wrapped up in a pact cli tool for uploading the provider contracts?

Current State

BDC Examples

All BDC providers

So to confirm for a BDC providers

1. create_branch_version
2. create_version_tag
3. publish_contracts

branches tags should be created before publishing contracts

see https://github.com/pactflow/example-bi-directional-provider-postman/blob/fb4336d2e1a9cc1e7d5f5a94dc16a7a0d9655d40/Makefile#L33 for an example

Docs

Need to target all the areas in the docs for tags.

• to add

Community

Maybe this PR is relevant over in docs.pact.io

Update docs for branches and environments

pact-foundation/docs.pact.io#136

Target State

• Get this all wrapped up in the CLI! (what do I need to do)

[YOU54F]

This is resolved now as part of pactflow/roadmap#68