Releasing

This project follows a lightweight Git Flow convention:

• main — stable, released code. The GitHub Pages docs site is built from here, and the release tag-triggered workflow publishes from it.
• develop — the default integration branch (origin/HEAD). All work lands here.
• Feature / fix / release branches — short-lived; merged into develop via a pull request, then deleted promptly. The repository auto-deletes head branches on merge (delete_branch_on_merge).

Branch rules

• Always branch from the latest develop and open a PR back to develop.
• CI (build + test) must pass before merging.
• After a PR merges, its head branch is deleted automatically — do not leave stale branches around. Merge what is ready, delete what is merged.
• main only ever moves by syncing from develop (a release sync PR). Never commit feature work directly to main.

Release process

1. Sync check. main and develop must point at the same commit before tagging. Run scripts/check-release-sync.ps1, or rely on the Release workflow, which refuses to run when they differ.
2. Version bump + changelog on develop: bump the Cargo.toml workspace version, web/package.json, npm/package.json, npm-cli/package.json and the platform sub-packages; add a CHANGELOG.md entry; update pinned-version docs and the README Release badge (?branch=vX.Y.Z).
3. Sync develop → main with a PR (merge, then the head branch is auto-deleted).
4. Tag vX.Y.Z on develop and push it. The Release workflow:
   • first verifies main == develop (fails otherwise),
   • builds the web UI and release binaries for every platform,
   • creates the GitHub Release with the binaries,
   • publishes the cmsis-dap-mcp and cmsis-dap-cli npm meta packages plus the 16 platform packages.

Checklist

Run the pre-release check:

scripts/check-release-sync.ps1

It fetches, verifies a clean tree, confirms main == develop, and lists any merged remote branches that should be deleted.