Smoke-test release phase 2 failed for 0.3.1

[vig-os-release-app]

Smoke-test release phase 2 failed while triggering downstream release workflow.

Release metadata

• version: 0.3.1
• release_kind: candidate
• release_pr: chore: release 0.3.1 devcontainer-smoke-test#70

Workflow context

• downstream workflow run: https://github.com/vig-os/devcontainer-smoke-test/actions/runs/23451495795

Job results

• validate: success
• trigger-release: failure
• summary: failure

[c-vigo]

Root cause analysis (0.3.1 smoke-test phase 2)

Summary

Phase 2 failed because the downstream release.yml run in devcontainer-smoke-test tries to check out release/0.3.1, but that branch no longer exists when the workflow runs. The branch was removed automatically when the release PR merged, before phase 2’s release.yml could use it.

Reconstructed timeline (UTC, 2026-03-23)

• 17:20:13 — just publish-candidate 0.3.1 triggered devcontainer release.yml on release/0.3.1 (run 23450601238). Validate, build, and publish succeeded.
• 17:35:01 — Upstream smoke-test job dispatched to the smoke-test repo. Phase 1 (repository-dispatch.yml) started (run 23451261786).
• Phase 1 succeeded in sequence: validate → deploy → wait-deploy-merge → cleanup-release (deleted stale release/0.3.1) → trigger-prepare-release (recreated release/0.3.1 from dev, opened PR #70 as draft) → ready-release-pr.
• 17:39:39 — PR [FEATURE] Remote devcontainer orchestration via just recipe #70 marked ready for review.
• 17:39:42 — PR [FEATURE] Remote devcontainer orchestration via just recipe #70 labeled release-kind:candidate.
• 17:39:45 — Auto-merge enabled on PR [FEATURE] Remote devcontainer orchestration via just recipe #70.
• 17:39:54 — Phase 1 run completed successfully.
• 17:40:22 — PR [FEATURE] Remote devcontainer orchestration via just recipe #70 auto-merged (release/0.3.1 → main).
• 17:40:23 — GitHub auto-deleted branch release/0.3.1 (repo has Automatically delete head branches enabled).
• 17:40:25 — Phase 2 (on-release-pr-merge.yml) started on PR close (run 23451495795).
• 17:40:41 — Phase 2 trigger-release dispatched release.yml with --ref dev, inputs version=0.3.1, release-kind=candidate (inner run 23451507841).
• 17:41:28 — Inner workflow failed at Checkout release branch: A branch or tag with the name 'release/0.3.1' could not be found.
• 17:42:46 — Phase 2 reported the inner release.yml conclusion as failure.
• 17:43:07 — notify-failure opened this issue.

So: deployment and prepare-release (phase 1) behaved as designed; the failure is confined to phase 2 waiting on a release.yml that assumes release/<version> still exists after the release PR has merged.

Technical root cause

Downstream release-core.yml checks out release/${{ version }} unconditionally in the validate job (see assets/workspace/.github/workflows/release-core.yml, step Checkout release branch).

After phase 1 enables auto-merge, the release PR merges quickly; with delete branch on merge, release/0.3.1 is removed immediately. Phase 2 then dispatches release.yml, which still expects that ref — hence the checkout error.

This is a design gap: phase 2 orchestration assumes the release branch survives the merge, but auto-merge plus auto-delete-head-branch removes it first.

Possible directions for a fix (separate scope)

1. Recreate the branch in phase 2 — e.g. in on-release-pr-merge.yml, recreate release/<version> from the merge commit before dispatching release.yml.
2. Make release-core.yml resilient — if release/<version> is missing, fall back to main (content already merged).
3. Turn off auto-delete head branches on the smoke-test repo (keeps the branch; needs cleanup discipline).
4. Change orchestration — e.g. defer merge until after downstream release.yml succeeds (larger behavioral change).

Happy to help turn one of these into a concrete issue/PR once we pick an approach.