CocoaPods publish job is being skipped

[sameerank]

Description

The CocoaPods publish step in the Release Please workflow is being skipped after releases are created. This has resulted in a mismatch in the latest published versions between SPM and CocoaPods.

Current State

• Latest GitHub Release/SPM Version: 0.5.0
• Latest Published CocoaPods Version: 0.3.0

$ bundle exec pod trunk info OpenFeature
OpenFeature
    - Versions:
      - 0.3.0 (2024-05-23 16:00:30 UTC)
    - Owners:
      - OpenFeature <openfeature-core@groups.io>

The Cause

The current implementation might be incorrect:

swift-sdk/.github/workflows/release-please.yaml

Lines 28 to 32 in 2903008

	outputs:
	release_created: ${{ steps.release.outputs['OpenFeature--release_created'] }}
	# Version doesn't include `v` as a prefix. This is undocumented
	version: ${{ steps.release.outputs['OpenFeature--version'] }}
	upload_url: ${{ steps.release.outputs['OpenFeature--upload_url'] }}

Proposed Fix

outputs:
  release_created: ${{ steps.release.outputs.release_created }}
  version: ${{ steps.release.outputs.version }}
  upload_url: ${{ steps.release.outputs.upload_url }}

Commands Used to Investigate

https://github.com/open-feature/swift-sdk/actions/runs/19297891762

gh run view 19297891762 -R open-feature/swift-sdk # View details of the release 0.5.0 workflow run
gh run view --job=55184361046 -R open-feature/swift-sdk # View details of the skipped cocoapods job
gh run view --job=55184339250 --log -R open-feature/swift-sdk | grep -A20 -B20 "release_created" # Check release-please job output for release_created variable

The CocoaPods job shows as "-" which indicates it was skipped.

✓ main Run Release Please · 19297891762
Triggered via push about 19 days ago

JOBS
✓ release-please in 12s (ID 55184339250)
- cocoapods in 0s (ID 55184361046)

Contents of steps.release.outputs

The logs show that the contents:

{
  "releases_created": "true",
  "release_created": "true",
  "id": "167739650",
  "name": "v0.5.0",
  "tag_name": "0.5.0",
  "sha": "d71686219a65ab78f77923ceb0e2ea549e1e50ef",
  "body": "[truncated for brevity]",
  "html_url": "https://github.com/open-feature/swift-sdk/releases/tag/0.5.0",
  "draft": "false",
  "upload_url": "https://uploads.github.com/repos/open-feature/swift-sdk/releases/167739650/assets{?name,label}",
  "path": ".",
  "version": "0.5.0",
  "major": "0",
  "minor": "5",
  "patch": "0",
  "paths_released": "[\".\"]"
}

Why the CocoaPods job is skipped

The CocoaPods job has this condition:

swift-sdk/.github/workflows/release-please.yaml

Line 37 in 2903008

if: ${{ fromJSON(needs.release-please.outputs.release_created || false) }}

Since steps.release.outputs['OpenFeature--release_created'] doesn't exist in the actual outputs, it evaluates to null. This causes needs.release-please.outputs.release_created to be falsy and skips the job.

Impact

• Users installing via CocoaPods are stuck on version 0.3.0. They're missing new features and fixes.
• The podspec file shows version 0.5.0, but this version is not available via pod install

Additional notes

The formatting assumed in release-please.yaml may not have worked because of the release type that was specified.

swift-sdk/release-please-config.json

Line 5 in 2903008

"release-type": "simple",

And so an alternative fix might be changing the release type to use namespaced outputs.