Merging Quickly

One caveat of auto is that you need to be mindful of merging multiple PRs at once. You must not merge a PR while another is publishing (ex: during lerna publish). While this window is small, it exists and you should know about it.

auto works by looking at the git tree to calculate the version bump then makes commits for the CHANGELOG.md and the new version. If you merge a PR while another is publishing:

• they might try to publish the same version number
• one will try to push over the other's changes and fail

If you ensure that the last build on baseBrach has finished you shouldn't run into any problems!

Beware Long Publishes

auto will do the following before trying to publish and push its commits:

• Check for commits on the remote
• Run the platform specific publish step

If your publish step runs a lengthy build, then the window for conflicts is extended. The recommended approach is to build your code before running auto so the window for errors stays small. This may make sense on some platforms and not others.

Example: When using the npm plugin don't use the script prepublishOnly to build your code

With skip-release

The one exception to this rule with when merging a bunch of PRs with skip-release labels.

You still can't merge a PR that triggers a release and then merge a PR with skip-release. This will result in problem 3 from above.

1. Merge PR #4 "patch"
2. Merge PR #5 "skip-release"

Result: #4 tries to push commits over #5 and fails
1. Merge PR #4 "patch"
2. Merge PR #5 "skip-release"

Result: #4 tries to push commits over #5 and fails

But you can merge a bunch of PRs with skip-release then merge a PR that triggers a release.

1. Merge PR #4 "skip-release"
2. Merge PR #5 "skip-release"
3. Merge PR #7 "patch"

Result: 1 "patch" released w/all PRs
1. Merge PR #4 "skip-release"
2. Merge PR #5 "skip-release"
3. Merge PR #7 "patch"

Result: 1 "patch" released w/all PRs

Because skip-release is present no commits are made and the release is fine!