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Unified Project Management & Automation Playbook

This consolidated guide serves as a blueprint for AI agents and maintainers to standardize repository management, release pipelines, and automated backlog prioritization.

1. Branch Protection & Integration Workflow

To maintain production stability, the master branch (or primary production branch) is protected against direct pushes. All integration must follow this strict protocol:

  • Branch Isolation: Create short-lived branches prefixed by scope:
  • feat/... for new features.
  • fix/... for bug fixes.
  • docs/... for documentation updates.
  • Pre-Commit Validation: Before pushing, local Git pre-commit hooks must run:
  • gitleaks to check for hardcoded secrets.
  • Language-specific formatters and linters (e.g., go fmt, go vet, golangci-lint or Python ruff, mypy).
  • The complete unit test suite.
  • Pull Request & Auto-Merge: Open PRs via the GitHub CLI and immediately enable auto-merge with a squash fallback to satisfy status checks asynchronously:
gh pr create --title "feat: <description>" --body "<details>" --head <branch_name> --base master
gh pr merge <pr_number> --auto --squash --delete-branch
  • Local Synchronization: Once merged, return to the base branch and pull changes:
git checkout master && git pull origin master

2. Automated Backlog Management & Reaction Prioritization

Instead of tracking requests in static lists, leverage GitHub Issues enhanced with structured templates and automated reaction-based prioritization.

Issue Templates

  • Bug Reports: Must capture environment-specific metadata (e.g., Liferay CE/DXP version, Native Bundle vs. Docker) and require verbose debug logs (-v or LOG_LEVEL=debug).
  • Feature Requests (FR): Must require a defined business or proof-of-concept (POC) impact to measure value. Include user-facing headers explaining how to vote using GitHub's native 👍 reactions.

Automated Prioritization Engine

Because GitHub Actions do not natively trigger on reaction additions/removals, implement a hybrid scheduler/trigger workaround (prioritize-issues.yml) running a Python parser (prioritize_issues.py):

+------------------+      +-----------------------+      +------------------------+
| Hybrid Trigger   | ---> | Python Parser Script  | ---> | GitHub CLI (gh)        |
| (Cron / Dispatch)|      | prioritize_issues.py  |      | Adjusts Priority Labels|
+------------------+      +-----------------------+      +------------------------+
  • The Engine: The script uses gh issue list --json number,reactionGroups to fetch thumbs-up counts.
  • Label Management: Dynamically strips old priority tags and applies unified tracking labels:
  • priority: p1 (10+ upvotes)
  • priority: p2 (5-9 upvotes)
  • priority: p3 (<5 upvotes)
  • Permissions: Ensure the GitHub Actions runner environment has explicit write permissions for issues:
permissions:
  issues: write

3. Version Tagging & CI/CD Release Pipeline

Automate releases using the repository's dedicated orchestrator script: python3 scripts/release.py.

  • Initiate a Pre-release: Run this command from master branch to bump the version, stage the required release-related changes, create a tracking PR, and push the release tag directly on the release branch:
python3 scripts/release.py --bump beta
  • Promote to Stable: Run this command from the active release/v* branch to promote the version to a stable release, auto-merge the tracking PR to master, and push the stable release tag on master:
python3 scripts/release.py --promote
  • CI/CD Compilation & Distribution: Pushing tags (pre-release or stable) triggers the GitHub Actions workflows, which execute:
  • Cross-Compilation: Compiles platform-specific binaries, injecting version numbers at build time.
  • Checksum Verification: Generates SHA256 hashes and pushes a checksums.txt file.
  • GitHub Release: Creates an official GitHub Release and attaches the compiled assets.
  • Package Managers: Automatically pushes updated manifests to community repositories.
  • Containerization: Builds and publishes the latest application container image.

4. Cryptographic Signing & CI Automation

Release binary code-signing is now fully automated via the GitHub Actions CI pipeline. We have transitioned away from local TTY handoffs to a secure cloud-based signing architecture.

The Automated Signing Pipeline

  1. Compilation Phase: The CI pipeline compiles the raw binaries for macOS, Linux, and Windows.
  2. Vault Authentication Phase: The pipeline authenticates securely with our cloud vault via OIDC to retrieve short-lived signing certificates.
  3. Signing Phase: The binaries are cryptographically signed using the cloud-hosted private keys.
  4. Distribution Phase: The signed binaries are attached to the GitHub Release.

Note

The legacy "Workspace Handoff Solution" (which required a manual developer interruption to authorize 1Password/Keychain prompts) is officially deprecated. Local builds generated by ldm package will no longer be signed by default unless the developer manually invokes the signing utilities.

5. Gateway & Remote Server Deployment

  • Production Compilation: Compile binaries using optimizations that strip local debugging file paths to enhance security and EDR compatibility (e.g., -trimpath).
  • Secure Asset Transit: Copy the production binaries, static templates, configuration assets, and translations to the remote VPS using an SSH identity key.
  • Remote Execution: Execute a secure SSH block to move assets to protected system directories, configure proper file permissions, and safely restart the host daemon:
ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_key user@ip "sudo systemctl restart application-daemon"
  • Automated Diagnostics Validation: Run a post-deployment health check script testing:
  • DNS A/AAAA record propagation.
  • Network reachability and firewall port openings (e.g., 22, 80, 443).
  • JSON responses from the application's version endpoint (/api/version) to guarantee the active deployment matches the newly released target version.

Last Updated: 2026-08-05 | Last Reviewed: 2026-07-22