chore(ci): strip GitHub Actions env vars in backfill-release-notes#5324
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semantic-release uses env-ci to detect the current branch, which reads GITHUB_REF from the GitHub Actions environment. The `noCi: true` option only bypasses the "not in CI" guard - it does not stop env-ci from resolving the branch from CI vars. When backfilling a stable tag like v2.100.1 from a workflow that runs on develop, env-ci returned "develop" even though the clone's HEAD was checked out on main, so semantic-release ran with branch=develop and bailed with "local branch develop is behind the remote one". Strip the GitHub Actions detection vars before invoking semantic-release so env-ci falls back to reading HEAD from the clone, which the script has already positioned on the correct branch for the tag.
avallete
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Coly010
approved these changes
May 20, 2026
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Fix the backfill-release-notes script to correctly detect the git branch when running semantic-release in dry-run mode.
The script was passing the full process environment to semantic-release, which includes GitHub Actions detection variables (GITHUB_REF, GITHUB_ACTIONS, etc.). The semantic-release library uses env-ci to detect the current branch, and env-ci prioritizes these CI environment variables over the actual git HEAD state. This caused env-ci to report the wrong branch when backfilling from a workflow that ran on a different branch than the current clone's HEAD, leading to semantic-release errors about local branches being behind remote.
Key changes:
https://claude.ai/code/session_01QQsjHNdZTJHhLWr2FYSjhe