Add --release-branch-template setting

[mattwynne]

🤔 What's changed?

• add a --release-branch-template setting

⚡️ What's your motivation?

As documented in #20, some people prefer to push to a "pre-release" branch first before doing a proper release.

🏷️ What kind of change is this?

• ⚡ New feature (non-breaking change which adds new behaviour)

📋 Checklist:

• I agree to respect and uphold the Cucumber Community Code of Conduct
• I've changed the behaviour of the code
  • I have added/updated tests to cover my changes.

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[mpkorstanje]

So what is the workflow here?

It seems that we're stepping away from the idea that one command automates everything and now have to do several manual follow-up steps.

I realize this aims to build trust, but it seems overly cautious. We should be able to trust the parts of CI that build the release. The previous commit should be passing and we only change version numbers.

I can accept that you have a different opinion but then this alternative work flow should be documented (somewhere?) because we now have to support both.

[mattwynne]

Personally I plan on using the defaults and pushing directly to the release/v1.0.0 branch.

@aurelien-reeves prefers to preview his release commit in a PR first and check that CI works on it. I figured this was a good way to allow him to do that but still make use of this too..

I'm not sure we need to document it so much as make it possible. ("Easy things should be easy, hard things should be possible"..?)

[mattwynne]

I think part of the issue may be that the manual release instructions encourage the releaser to do dependency upgrades just before making a release. I'm not a fan of that approach - I want releases to be smooth and painless and so I'd like to get any dependency upgrades done beforehand, separately. In that case, as you said Rien, the only changes in the release commit are version numbers.

[mpkorstanje]

We could remove those instructions we have renovate bot to do this now.

[mattwynne]

We could remove those instructions we have renovate bot to do this now.

I fully agree. I'd like to discuss this on a Thursday call as I think @aurelien-reeves has a different point of view. I think there are a few repos where maybe Renovate isn't doing a comprehensive job, perhaps where there are pinned dependencies. I'm not sure of the details but we should discuss it.

[mpkorstanje]

Then at the very least upgrade the dependencies after the release.

[mattwynne]

So, given we have #51 and following today's conversation do you think we still need this @aurelien-reeves @mpkorstanje?

[mattwynne]

I'll assume not - we can always reopen it.

The less features the better!