Context

If the dry_run param is not set when running the "golang/pre-publish" Github action, the state of the Go Driver repository gets messed up after the release. Specifically, the tagged release commit is not on any branch and the "version.go" file is not updated in the master branch.

We should update the "golang/pre-publish" Github action to work correctly even if "dry_run" is not set.

Additional context from GODRIVER-3968:

Name of Failure:

The v2.7.0 tag was published pointing at a commit that exists on no branch. This results in the following warning on v2.7.0:

This commit does not belong to any branch on this repository, and may belong to a fork outside of the repository.

Additionally, the release process did not bump the version on master. The result was as if dry_run:true which was not the case. Despite all of this, the release had no failures.

Link to task:

https://github.com/mongodb/mongo-go-driver/actions/runs/27723314737/job/82015268412

Context of when and why the failure occurred:

As of GODRIVER-3780, then Go Driver began pinning GitHub actions to specific commit versions to satisfy security alerts concerning supply chain attacks. In GODRIVER-3797 we skip manual merge on dry run to reduce issues with running a test release. The resulting commit (9e807b4) was bumped in the Go Driver in PR #2402 (late May / early June 2026).

Why didn't this happen for the V2.6.0 release?

The commit for the release logic was pre-9e807b4.

...

The tooling now requires users to add the following dry_run logic to release.yml, which the Go Driver did not do:

dry_run: ${{ inputs.push_changes != 'true' }}

This is not intuitive. Instead, we should give dry_run a default in the tooling so an omitted input no longer silently skips the merge-up:

dry_run:
    description: Whether this is a dry run
    default: "false"        # was: required: true

This way, when a caller omits dry_run, it resolves to "false" instead of "", so dry_run == 'false' is true and the merge-up runs.

Definition of done

• Update the golang/pre-publish Github action to work correctly even if "dry_run" is not set.
  • Alternatively, make the action fail if "dry_run" is not set. It's already marked as "required: true", so it's unclear why the Github action didn't fail when it wasn't set.

Pitfalls

What should the implementer watch out for? What are the risks?