Avoid SVN timeouts during publishing to dotorg by desrosj · Pull Request #79919 · WordPress/gutenberg

desrosj · 2026-07-06T20:27:07Z

What?

This modifies the logic responsible for committing changes to the WordPress.org plugin repository to be less likely to encounter timeout issues.

Closes #79804.

Why?

This workflow frequently encounters timeouts, which makes it appear like the release has not been published. However, the release often is published despite the error. This makes it quite confusing to know what needs to be addressed and what was successful, and can lead to contributors unintentionally ignoring or missing legitimate errors.

How?

In the current state, the full contents of the plugin are transmitted twice in the same transaction. This PR splits the operations into two atomic transactions:

One that commits all changes to trunk
One that creates the new tag.
The tagging transaction has also been changed to a remote server-side transaction, which does not read, download, or upload any file content and relies on the "cheap copy" in SVN.

Because the upload-tag step creates a tag for a version after trunk has been updated to a newer version, the same cheap copy command cannot be used and the full contents of the plugin needs to be transmitted during the commit. This could likely be improved, but it's not handled in this PR for the time being because it's a less common path.

The committing and tagging logic have also been split into separate jobs. To improve tagging commands, branches are now utilized in the .org directory to allow for improved logic around tagging releases that occur after a newer one has been published in trunk.

Use of AI Tools

Yes. Claude Code was used to create the initial draft of this PR before being reviewed by myself.

github-actions · 2026-07-06T20:27:25Z

The following accounts have interacted with this PR and/or linked issues. I will continue to update these lists as activity occurs. You can also manually ask me to refresh this list by adding the props-bot label.

Unlinked Accounts

The following contributors have not linked their GitHub and WordPress.org accounts: @Copilot.

Contributors, please read how to link your accounts to ensure your work is properly credited in WordPress releases.

If you're merging code through a pull request on GitHub, copy and paste the following into the bottom of the merge commit message.

Unlinked contributors: Copilot.

Co-authored-by: desrosj <desrosj@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: ramonjd <ramonopoly@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: Mamaduka <mamaduka@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: ciampo <mciampini@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: tyxla <tyxla@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: bgrgicak <berislavgrgicak@git.wordpress.org>

To understand the WordPress project's expectations around crediting contributors, please review the Contributor Attribution page in the Core Handbook.

Copilot

Pull request overview

Updates the GitHub Actions workflow that publishes Gutenberg releases to the WordPress.org plugin SVN repository to reduce the likelihood of SVN timeouts and make failures less confusing during releases.

Changes:

Splits “publish trunk” and “create tag” into separate SVN transactions, with tagging performed as a server-side svn cp.
Switches the plugin repo URL from a hard-coded value to a GitHub Actions variable.
Increases SVN import timeout to 600s and breaks download/unzip/cleanup into discrete steps.

ramonjd

As far as I can tell, this looks like a good direction. Should we get it in to try?

There are some other PRs going, e.g., #79858 and #79884 but that's more about merge order I guess.

Mamaduka

Thanks, @desrosj!

ciampo · 2026-07-07T09:17:23Z

+            - name: Commit changes
              if: steps.check_svn_tag.outputs.exists != 'true'
              working-directory: ./trunk
              run: |
-                  svn st | grep '^?' | awk '{print $2}' | xargs -r svn add
-                  svn st | grep '^!' | awk '{print $2}' | xargs -r svn rm
-                  svn cp . "../tags/$VERSION"
-                  svn commit . "../tags/$VERSION" \
-                   -m "Releasing version $VERSION" \
+                  svn commit -m "Releasing version $VERSION" \
                   --no-auth-cache --non-interactive  --username "$SVN_USERNAME" --password "$SVN_PASSWORD" \
                   --config-option=servers:global:http-timeout=600

+            - name: Tag the new version
+              if: steps.check_svn_tag.outputs.exists != 'true'
+              run: |
+                  svn cp "$PLUGIN_REPO_URL/trunk" "$PLUGIN_REPO_URL/tags/$VERSION" \
+                   -m "Tagging version $VERSION" \
+                   --no-auth-cache --non-interactive --username "$SVN_USERNAME" --password "$SVN_PASSWORD" \
+                   --config-option=servers:global:http-timeout=600


Spotted with the help of an AI agent.

This split makes the release easier to recover from, but the tag step now copies $PLUGIN_REPO_URL/trunk without pinning the revision created by the preceding svn commit.

For URL-to-URL copies, Subversion uses HEAD when no source revision is supplied, so a concurrent manual/workflow update to WordPress.org SVN trunk between these two steps could make tags/$VERSION point at different contents than the commit this run just produced.

The old working-copy copy avoided that by committing trunk and tag together. If we want the new cheap server-side copy, we should capture the revision from the trunk commit and copy that exact revision, for example:

commit_output="$( svn commit -m "Releasing version $VERSION" ... )" echo "$commit_output" trunk_revision="$( sed -nE 's/^Committed revision ([0-9]+)\.$/\1/p' <<< "$commit_output" )" svn cp "$PLUGIN_REPO_URL/trunk@$trunk_revision" "$PLUGIN_REPO_URL/tags/$VERSION" \ -m "Tagging version $VERSION" \ --no-auth-cache --non-interactive --username "$SVN_USERNAME" --password "$SVN_PASSWORD" \ --config-option=servers:global:http-timeout=600

The exact parsing can be adjusted, but the important part is that tags/$VERSION is created from the revision this run just committed, not whatever trunk happens to be at tag time.

Reference checked: Subversion svn copy docs document URL-to-URL copies as server-side copies and note that URL sources use HEAD when no peg revision is supplied.

Came here to highlight this. If Tag the new version fails after Commit changes succeeds, trunk will be updated but the version will be untagged.

Hmm. There should never be two people trying to commit to the .org repository at the same time. And concurrency from the GH Actions workflow should prevent two workflow runs from committing at the same time.

I think that there should be an equivalent @committers Version X.Y of the Gutenberg plugin is being released. announcement in Slack similar to the Core release would be sufficient to avoid this.

Very few people actually have commit access to the plugin itself, and releasing is almost entirely handled through this workflow. So I don't know how this scenario can realistically occur.

…//github.com/WordPress/gutenberg into fix/svn-timeouts-during-publishing-to-dotorg

desrosj · 2026-07-07T17:30:09Z

@copilot I've gone and made some larger changes to this PR to simplify/consolidate logic and separate the tagging and committing operations into separate jobs.

Please re-review the PR.

…ison

Copilot · 2026-07-07T17:32:33Z

@copilot I've gone and made some larger changes to this PR to simplify/consolidate logic and separate the tagging and committing operations into separate jobs.

Please re-review the PR.

Reviewed. One bug found and fixed in the new tag-release job: SVN_PATH on line 375 used should_update_trunk && 'trunk' || format(...), but GitHub Actions outputs are always strings — the string 'false' is non-empty and therefore truthy, so SVN_PATH would have always resolved to 'trunk' regardless of the actual value. Fixed in the latest commit by using an explicit == 'true' comparison.

Copilot

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 1 out of 1 changed files in this pull request and generated 5 comments.

Co-authored-by: Copilot Autofix powered by AI <175728472+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

desrosj · 2026-07-10T17:59:07Z

Converting this to Draft state so #79858 can be merged first and conflicts can be resolved.

desrosj added 5 commits July 6, 2026 15:44

Move plugin URL to an environment variable.

7dc2989

Split each operation into a different step.

a9be653

Improve logic for committing and tagging a release.

f321671

Split each command into it's own step.

9ce3275

Increase timeout value for tagging only.

022a68d

desrosj requested a review from Copilot July 6, 2026 20:27

desrosj self-assigned this Jul 6, 2026

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of desrosj July 6, 2026 20:27 View session

Copilot AI reviewed Jul 6, 2026

View reviewed changes

Comment thread .github/workflows/upload-release-to-plugin-repo.yml Outdated

Comment thread .github/workflows/upload-release-to-plugin-repo.yml Outdated

Comment thread .github/workflows/upload-release-to-plugin-repo.yml Outdated

desrosj added the [Type] Build Tooling Issues or PRs related to build tooling label Jul 6, 2026

desrosj added this to the Gutenberg 23.6 milestone Jul 6, 2026

desrosj requested review from t-hamano and tyxla July 6, 2026 20:30

Copilot started work on behalf of desrosj July 6, 2026 20:31 View session

desrosj requested review from bgrgicak, ciampo, ramonjd and youknowriad July 6, 2026 20:31

Add http-timeout to svn cp tagging step

45f7b2a

Copilot finished work on behalf of desrosj July 6, 2026 20:32

Merge branch 'trunk' into fix/svn-timeouts-during-publishing-to-dotorg

ffddd06

desrosj changed the title ~~Fix/svn timeouts during publishing to dotorg~~ Avoid SVN timeouts during publishing to dotorg Jul 6, 2026

desrosj mentioned this pull request Jul 6, 2026

Update Changelog and upload Gutenberg plugin to WordPress.org plugin repo failed with '/gutenberg' path not found #79804

Open

6 tasks

ramonjd reviewed Jul 7, 2026

View reviewed changes

Comment thread .github/workflows/upload-release-to-plugin-repo.yml

ramonjd approved these changes Jul 7, 2026

View reviewed changes

Comment thread .github/workflows/upload-release-to-plugin-repo.yml Outdated

Mamaduka approved these changes Jul 7, 2026

View reviewed changes

ciampo reviewed Jul 7, 2026

View reviewed changes

desrosj added 2 commits July 7, 2026 11:29

Improving logic further.

564ca25

Separate tagging into a separate job.

923400d

desrosj added 3 commits July 7, 2026 13:09

Merge branch 'fix/svn-timeouts-during-publishing-to-dotorg' of https:…

8ffdd2a

…//github.com/WordPress/gutenberg into fix/svn-timeouts-during-publishing-to-dotorg

Tag branches from trunk when updating trunk.

7e722c9

Add new job requirement.

9746375

Copilot started work on behalf of desrosj July 7, 2026 17:30 View session

Fix SVN_PATH ternary in tag-release job to use explicit string compar…

65ca6c9

…ison

Copilot finished work on behalf of desrosj July 7, 2026 17:32

desrosj requested review from Mamaduka, ciampo, Copilot and ramonjd July 7, 2026 17:54

Merge branch 'trunk' into fix/svn-timeouts-during-publishing-to-dotorg

afce059

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of desrosj July 7, 2026 17:57 View session

Copilot AI reviewed Jul 7, 2026

View reviewed changes

desrosj and others added 3 commits July 7, 2026 14:04

Add missing timeout value changes.

45be271

Co-authored-by: Copilot Autofix powered by AI <175728472+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

Use release.tag_name instead of release.name.

1be7f55

Merge branch 'trunk' into fix/svn-timeouts-during-publishing-to-dotorg

44d8067

desrosj marked this pull request as draft July 10, 2026 17:59

Uh oh!

Conversation

desrosj commented Jul 6, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

What?

Why?

How?

Use of AI Tools

Uh oh!

github-actions Bot commented Jul 6, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Unlinked Accounts

Uh oh!

Copilot AI left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Pull request overview

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

ramonjd left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Mamaduka left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

ciampo Jul 7, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

tyxla Jul 7, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

desrosj Jul 7, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

desrosj commented Jul 7, 2026

Uh oh!

Copilot AI commented Jul 7, 2026

Uh oh!

Copilot AI left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Pull request overview

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

desrosj commented Jul 10, 2026

Uh oh!

Reviewers

Assignees

Labels

Projects

Milestone

Development

Uh oh!

7 participants

desrosj commented Jul 6, 2026 •

edited

Loading

github-actions Bot commented Jul 6, 2026 •

edited

Loading