discussion: "hotfix" releases

In #80 (closed) it was noted that the mechanism for making "fix" releases from previous ones involved circumventing our branch protection processes.

Specifically, if 1.1.0 has been released, releasing a "bug fix" 1.0.1 release involves pushing to a branch starting with hotfix-. (If #80 (closed) is addressed the prefix will change but the principle stands.)

This will immediately make a new release with the recommended configuration of release-it in the guidebook.

As such there's no elegant way to have a MR which will release when merged. One's only real option is to create a "non-magic" branch from main and target the MR to it and then create the magic branch once MR is merged. This is fiddly at best and dangerous at worst because the mere action of pushing the "magic" branch causes a new release.

Ideally we'd have a situation where a) merely creating the hotfix or release/fix-... branch doesn't cause a release until a MR is merged into it or b) have the "magic" branches be longer-lived v1.1, v2.3, etc branches which can be targets for MRs.

This may require writing a custom release-it plugin since release-it seems very focussed on the "all progress happens on main"-style of development.