balena "draft" releases to force through broken / failed releases

[shawaj]

We are regularly getting issues where balena releases are failing with ESOCKETTIMEDOUT errors. For example ...

https://github.com/NebraLtd/helium-miner-software/actions/runs/1535610752/attempts/2

It is possible to force these through manually using the --draft flag:

balena deploy nebraltd/helium-indoor-868 --logs --debug --nocache --build --draft

and then finalising the release using either balena CLI or by finding the release in balenaCloud and finalising it from the dropdown.

Whilst this is a bit of a workaround, it does seem to work most of the time.

Need to add this to documentation and/or change the deploy actions to use this flow

[shawaj]

FYI @vpetersson

[shawaj]

created a manually triggerable action for draft deploys in #294

We can probably find a way to output the release tag and then finalise the release either in the same action or in a separate manually triggerable action. But this should be helpful as a starting point in any case

[shawaj]

Sadly this hasn't helped with github actions / balena.

Still will likely work manually but really balena need to sort this out as it's impractical to do this manually every time for 14 fleets 🤦

[shawaj]

closing this for now, as #294 #299 #300 and #301 seem to have made a big improvement.

we can monitor this and reopen if necessary at a later date