ci: fix Release: Hotfix Candidate PR step

[alandtse]

Two bugs surfaced by run 25649556508:

1. Backtick command-substitution in PR body. source_desc (set on line 175) contains literal backticks. When inlined via ${{ steps.cherry.outputs.source_desc }} into the bash heredoc on line 275, bash interprets them as command substitution — fix-only: command not found, v1.5.1: command not found. Fix: pass via step env: so the value reaches bash as a normal variable expansion that doesn't re-evaluate the contents.

2. Missing hotfix label. gh pr create --label hotfix failed with could not add label: 'hotfix' not found. Fix: best-effort gh label create hotfix before gh pr create, swallowing the error if the label already exists.

Both fixes are scoped to the failing step. No behavior change beyond unblocking the candidate PR open.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Chores
  • Improved the hotfix release workflow with enhanced environment variable handling during pull request creation to ensure consistent and proper text formatting in PR descriptions.
  • Added automatic hotfix label creation and management to the release workflow, ensuring the required label exists on target repositories before PR creation.

[coderabbitai]

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The hotfix release workflow now safely passes commit metadata (SOURCE_DESC) to PR creation via environment variables to prevent bash re-evaluation of backticks, and automatically pre-creates the hotfix label on the target repository.

Changes

Hotfix Release Workflow Improvements

Layer / File(s)	Summary
SOURCE_DESC environment variable and PR body .github/workflows/release-hotfix.yaml	The PR-creation step receives SOURCE_DESC as an environment variable to prevent bash from re-evaluating backticks in the commit description. The PR body references this environment variable instead of inline step-output interpolation.
Hotfix label pre-creation .github/workflows/release-hotfix.yaml	Before running gh pr create, the workflow now calls gh label create hotfix with errors suppressed to ensure the hotfix label exists on the target repository.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~8 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• community-shaders/skyrim-community-shaders#2307: Both modify the release-hotfix workflow — this PR refines SOURCE_DESC handling and label creation while the prior PR introduced the hotfix workflow itself.

Suggested reviewers

• doodlum
• SkrubbySkrubInAShrub

Poem

🐰 A workflow once careless with backticks deep,
Now safely through env vars its secrets it'll keep.
With labels pre-made and descriptions so clean,
The hotfix releases now flow like a dream!

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title 'ci: fix Release: Hotfix Candidate PR step' directly addresses the main changes in the PR, which are fixes to the Release: Hotfix Candidate workflow step. It is specific and clearly conveys the primary change.

_{✏️ Tip: You can configure your own custom pre-merge checks in the settings.}

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests

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