CI: stop publishing to Play production on staging → main merges

[patrickrb]

Why

Merging staging → main uploaded the signed AAB to the Google Play production track as part of the same run, so a promotion PR shipped to users the instant it merged. Production should be a deliberate act, not a side effect of a merge.

What changed

.github/workflows/android.yml — the production (push-to-main) lane now leaves play_track empty:

• The merge still does everything else: auto-bumped android-v<x.y.z> tag, signed APK/AAB, full GitHub Release, and the semver + release notes promoted from the staging build it's promoting.
• Publish AAB to Play and Warn if Play publish failed are gated on a non-empty play_track, so the upload step is simply skipped.
• The release summary now prints Play track: none — not published. plus the tag to push.

Shipping to production is now manual: push the android-v<x.y.z> tag the merge created —

git fetch --tags && git push origin android-v1.2.3

— which re-runs the Android release lane in its tag lane and uploads to the Play production track. (Tags created by the release API with GITHUB_TOKEN don't trigger workflows, so the merge itself can't kick this off.)

Unchanged: staging → Play internal, and an android-v* tag push → Play production.

docs/release-pipeline.md updated to match (branch-lifecycle diagram, the staging → main bullet, the new manual-ship bullet, and the Play Console setup note).

Verification

No unit-testable code path here (workflow YAML), so this was exercised directly:

• Ran the Compute version and release tag step standalone for all three lanes: production → should_release=true, play_track= (empty), tag android-v0.151.0; staging → internal; android-v* tag → production.
• Ran the Release summary step with an empty and a set track — renders the "not published" line and the normal line respectively.
• bash -n clean on all 27 run blocks; the workflow parses as YAML.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_014pyS6BHUwx1JTWdDijX4Be

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 42.34%. Comparing base (8049fd8) to head (18a39f3).

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff            @@
##                dev     #794   +/-   ##
=========================================
  Coverage     42.34%   42.34%           
  Complexity      226      226           
=========================================
  Files           267      267           
  Lines         31834    31834           
  Branches       3650     3650           
=========================================
  Hits          13479    13479           
  Misses        18097    18097           
  Partials        258      258           

Flag	Coverage Δ
android	16.90% <ø> (ø)
native	9.93% <ø> (ø)

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[Copilot]

🟡 Changes recommended

The proposed tag push is a no-op because the tag already exists remotely, leaving no functioning production-publish path.

Once you've addressed the issues Copilot identified, you can request another Copilot review.

Pull request overview

Separates Play production publishing from main merges.

Changes:

• Skips AAB publishing when main creates a release.
• Documents manual production publishing.
• Updates release summaries for skipped publishing.

File summaries

File	Description
.github/workflows/android.yml	Gates Play publishing on a configured track.
docs/release-pipeline.md	Documents the revised release process.

Review details

Suppressed comments (2)

.github/workflows/android.yml:684

• Routing production publishing through the tag lane also drops the promoted Play release notes. Write release notes explicitly has no notes.txt for a tag run and writes only FT8AF $VERSION_NAME, which whatsNewDirectory then uploads instead of the staging notes previously available in this main run. Persist or recover the promoted notes when manually publishing.

                  # No Play publish on a staging -> main merge: the merge cuts
                  # the android-v* tag + GitHub Release only. Pushing that tag
                  # by hand re-runs this job in the `tag` lane, which is what
                  # uploads to the Play production track.
                  play_track=""

docs/release-pipeline.md:31

• A qualifying main merge can still publish Play listing metadata and therefore make user-visible changes, so “never reaches users” overstates this AAB-specific change. Limit the sentence to production binary publication.

  **production** track. A merge to `main` on its own never reaches users.

• Files reviewed: 2/2 changed files
• Comments generated: 3
• Review effort level: Balanced

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