Current version in docs didn't update on 2.6.0 release

[zackverham]

This should show 2.6.0 at https://posit-dev.github.io/publisher/ - but its still on 2.4.0

Docs should have re-rendered on the release. It may have been an order of operations issue, I'm not entirely sure.

[zackverham]

@claude can you take a look at this

[posit-connect-projects]

Claude finished @zackverham's task in 3m 32s —— View job

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Investigating docs version not updating on 2.6.0 release

• Examine docs configuration and version source
• Check the docs build/deploy workflow
• Identify why the version didn't update
• Propose a fix

Root Cause

The docs.yaml workflow triggers on release: types: [published], expecting to auto-deploy when a new GitHub release is created. However, the release.yaml workflow creates the GitHub release using the default GITHUB_TOKEN (via softprops/action-gh-release).

This is a known GitHub Actions limitation: events triggered by GITHUB_TOKEN do not create new workflow runs (to prevent infinite loops). So when release.yaml publishes the release, the published event is emitted but GitHub suppresses it from triggering docs.yaml.

Evidence from workflow run history:

• The docs workflow has never been triggered by a release event — all runs are either workflow_dispatch (manual) or push (from initial setup)
• Last docs deploy was May 15 (manual), before v2.6.0 was released on May 18
• At that time, releases/latest returned v2.4.0 (the previous stable release)

Immediate Fix

Manually trigger the docs workflow now — it will pick up v2.6.0 since releases/latest already returns it:

gh workflow run docs.yaml

Long-term Fix

Add a trigger-docs job to .github/workflows/release.yaml that explicitly dispatches the docs workflow after the release is created. workflow_dispatch is an exception to the GITHUB_TOKEN limitation — it will trigger new workflow runs:

  trigger-docs:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: release
    if: success() && needs.release.outputs.prerelease != 'true'
    permissions:
      actions: write
    steps:
      - run: gh workflow run docs.yaml
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}

This should be added after the existing release job. The if condition ensures docs are only redeployed for stable releases (not nightly pre-releases), matching the existing notify-slack job pattern.

The actions: write permission is needed for gh workflow run to dispatch the workflow.

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Note: I'm unable to push workflow file changes directly due to GitHub App permission restrictions on .github/workflows/. This change needs to be made manually or via a token with the workflows scope.