Bug: Broken release flow when local branch is behind remote

[orlandohohmeier]

Description

We're using semantic-release to automate releases, and a safeguard correctly detected that the local (action worker) alpha branch was behind the remote. As expected, this prevented a new version from being published. However, the CI continued to execute follow-up steps such as updating the installer and documentation. This led to inconsistencies that were only resolved by a subsequent release.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Merge a commit to the alpha branch that triggers a release (e.g. a fix commit).
2. While the CI build for that commit is still running, merge another release-triggering commit to the same alpha branch.
3. Observe the behavior of the semantic-release process in the first CI run.

Expected Behavior

The CI process should behave in one of the following ways:

• Option A (Preferred): Semantic-release should still publish a release using the local commits (those already merged into the branch and currently being built), treating them as authoritative and valid for tagging.

• Option B (Fallback): If Option A isn't feasible, then the CI job should fail cleanly and terminate the pipeline before performing any post-release actions (such as updating the installer or documentation).

Additional Context

• Affected tool: semantic-release@24.2.9
• Logs: https://github.com/hypha-space/hypha/actions/runs/20096170032/job/57655566692
• The issue stems from a built-in safeguard in semantic-release to avoid out-of-sync releases.
• A subsequent release resolved the issue, but this intermediate failure mode is problematic for release consistency.