docs: track upstream sync progress with marker refs - #65
Merged
Conversation
Merging upstream refs into master to record sync progress makes every upstream commit an ancestor of master. semantic-release analyses <lastTag>..master by walking all parents, so commits we deliberately skipped enter the version calculation and changelog — one upstream 'feat:' turns a patch into a minor and credits us with code we never shipped. Ghost merges have the same problem: the tree is unchanged but the upstream parent is still recorded. Track progress with a sync-marker/<remote> ref instead. It is not an ancestor of master, so releases never see it, and because tracking no longer depends on history shape the PR merge strategy stops mattering — squashing a sync PR used to silently destroy the record. Also folds in what the last sync surfaced: don't run both example builds concurrently, pipefail so a failed xcodebuild isn't hidden by tail, keep only the formatting for files the sync touched, and don't trust a shadowed grep.
santhoshvai
added a commit
that referenced
this pull request
Aug 17, 2026
… rule Restructure upstream-sync.md: each pitfall now lives in the workflow phase where it bites, and former pitfalls 10/13 merge into one section covering semantic-release vs upstream ancestors, the ghost-merge + absorbing-tag procedure, and the 'commits behind' banner. Also re-lands the banner guidance lost when PR #65 was squash-merged during the GitHub outage.
This file contains hidden or bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
Sign up for free
to join this conversation on GitHub.
Already have an account?
Sign in to comment
1 participant
Add this suggestion to a batch that can be applied as a single commit.This suggestion is invalid because no changes were made to the code.Suggestions cannot be applied while the pull request is closed.Suggestions cannot be applied while viewing a subset of changes.Only one suggestion per line can be applied in a batch.Add this suggestion to a batch that can be applied as a single commit.Applying suggestions on deleted lines is not supported.You must change the existing code in this line in order to create a valid suggestion.Outdated suggestions cannot be applied.This suggestion has been applied or marked resolved.Suggestions cannot be applied from pending reviews.Suggestions cannot be applied on multi-line comments.Suggestions cannot be applied while the pull request is queued to merge.Suggestion cannot be applied right now. Please check back later.
Merging upstream refs into master to record sync progress makes every upstream commit an ancestor of master. semantic-release analyses ..master by walking all parents, so commits we deliberately skipped enter the version calculation and changelog — one upstream 'feat:' turns a patch into a minor and credits us with code we never shipped. Ghost merges have the same problem: the tree is unchanged but the upstream parent is still recorded.
Track progress with a sync-marker/ ref instead. It is not an ancestor of master, so releases never see it, and because tracking no longer depends on history shape the PR merge strategy stops mattering — squashing a sync PR used to silently destroy the record.
Also folds in what the last sync surfaced: don't run both example builds concurrently, pipefail so a failed xcodebuild isn't hidden by tail, keep only the formatting for files the sync touched, and don't trust a shadowed grep.