Merge pull request #1812 from Dexterp37/alpha-ci

Bug 1863916 - Add support for cutting 'prerelease' releases

Author: Dexterp37

.circleci/config.yml

@@ -213,9 +213,30 @@ jobs:
       - run:
           name: NPM Authentication
           command: echo "//registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=${NPM_TOKEN}" > glean/.npmrc
-      - run:
-          name: Publish to npm
-          command: export PATH=.:$PATH && (cd glean && npm publish --access public)
+      # This conditional matches the tag that contains 'pre', used
+      # to mark prerelease builds. Since CircleCI conditionals do
+      # not directly support 'else's, we need another conditional.
+      - when:
+          condition:
+            matches:
+              pattern: "^v.*-pre.*$"
+              value: << pipeline.git.tag >>
+          steps:
+            - run:
+                name: Publish to npm (prerelease)
+                command: export PATH=.:$PATH && (cd glean && npm publish --access public --tag prerelease)
+      # This conditional matches 'release': we won't tag the npm
+      # release in this case, because no 'pre' is found in the tag.
+      - when:
+          condition:
+            not:
+              matches:
+                pattern: "^v.*-pre.*$"
+                value: << pipeline.git.tag >>
+          steps:
+            - run:
+                name: Publish to npm
+                command: export PATH=.:$PATH && (cd glean && npm publish --access public)
       - run:
           name: Get ghr release tool
           command: |

.dictionary

@@ -61,6 +61,7 @@ md
 mdroettboom
 mozilla
 npm
+prerelease
 runtime
 schemas
 setRawNanos

docs/guides/release.md

@@ -6,15 +6,24 @@ That package will contain sub packages with Glean.js builds for each environment
 
 The development & release process roughly follows the [Git Flow model](https://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/).
 
-> **Note**: The rest of this section assumes that `upstream` points to the `https://github.com/mozilla/glean.js` repository, while `origin` points to the developer fork. For some developer workflows, `upstream` can be the same as `origin`.
+> [!NOTE]
+> The rest of this section assumes that `upstream` points to the `https://github.com/mozilla/glean.js` repository, while `origin` points to the developer fork. For some developer workflows, `upstream` can be the same as `origin`.
 
 ## Standard release
 
 Releases can only be done by one of the Glean maintainers.
 
 - Main development branch: `main`
 - Main release branch: `release`
-- Specific release branch: `release-vX.Y.Z`
+- Specific release branch: `release-vX.Y.Z` (or `release-vX.Y.Z-pre.N` for prerelease)
+
+> [!IMPORTANT]
+> Adding a suffix to the version **and** the branch/tag names such as
+> `-pre.0` triggers publishing to the NPM `prerelease` channel. This enables early
+> consumers to test the latest capabilities, without widely rolling them out to
+> all the consumers.
+> If cutting a prerelease, whenever `release-vX.Y.Z` is specified in the rest of the
+> document assume it refers to `release-vX.Y.Z-pre.N`.
 
 ### Create a release branch