Github release creation stopped working

[Kwankyu Lee]

Hi,

Hopefully, some of you may have noticed that the latest release 10.8.beta2 did not appear at

https://github.com/sagemath/sage/releases

These releases are important for properly documenting your contributions.

The github workflow ".github/workflows/dist.yml" is responsible for automatic creation of the releases.

I traced how it stopped working. The PR merged to 10.8.beta2

https://github.com/sagemath/sage/pull/40709

is the culprit. It removed a significant portion of the workflow script. In particular, the workflow step "Create release".

I am upset by that the PR author removed the code in the name of "outdated things". We have to understand the code and why it exists before we declare that the code is  "outdated". 

I am upset by that the PR reviewer gave the PR positive review without "reviewing". A reviewer should be half the author. A reviewer should be especially careful when a PR removes code instead of adding code, since that is likely to break things. 

Please restore the carelessly removed code.

[Tobia...@gmx.de]

At https://github.com/sagemath/sage/actions/runs/17527169457/job/49779204920 you can see that the workflow fails in the "release_dist" step with the error " sage_bootstrap.tarball.FileNotMirroredError: tarball does not exist on mirror network". I have no idea what this step is checking in detail but according to the comments in the workflow I get the impression that Volker is supposed to upload some files before he pushes the new release to github, but didn't do it this time. Anyway, the release_dist step was not touched in  https://github.com/sagemath/sage/pull/40709.

Concerning " workflow step "Create release"." was removed: no it was replaced by using the softprops/action-gh-release to create the release notes at the same time as uploading the release assets. Since adding the assets didn't work as can be seen in https://github.com/sagemath/sage/actions/runs/16854260655/job/47745153952 which was also linked in the PR description.