ci: support alpha beta and release candidate versions

[thomson-t]

Background

The Android monorepo release workflow needs fixed pre-release Maven Central versions for partner and internal validation before stable releases. The current draft workflow can only prepare stable patch, minor, or major versions, and the publish workflow only runs from main while always marking GitHub releases as latest.

What Has Changed

• Added qualified version support to Release - Draft with optional qualifier input and bump-type=none for moving between alpha, beta, release candidate, and stable versions.
• Updated generated release PRs to target the selected dispatch branch and use compliant release/prep-<version> branch names.
• Updated Release - Publish to run from main and workstation/*, and to mark qualified versions as GitHub pre-releases instead of latest releases.
• Rewrote RELEASE.md around the current draft and publish workflows, and added a changelog entry for the release workflow capability.

Screenshots/Video

N/A — workflow and documentation changes only.

Checklist

• I have performed a self-review of my own code.
• I have made corresponding changes to the documentation.
• I have added tests that prove my fix is effective or that my feature works.
• I have tested this locally.

Additional Notes

Validated locally with:

• trunk check
• trunk check --ci
• ./gradlew publishMavenPublicationToMavenLocal -PVERSION=6.0.0-alpha1
• ./gradlew publishMavenPublicationToMavenLocal -PVERSION=6.0.0-alpha1 -c settings-kits.gradle -Pmparticle.kit.mparticleFromMavenLocalOnly=true
• ./gradlew build
• ./gradlew test
• ./gradlew ktlintCheck
• git diff --check

[cursor]

PR Summary

Medium Risk
Changes the automated release/versioning pipeline (VERSION computation, PR targeting, and GitHub release flags), which could impact publishing/tagging if misconfigured, but is limited to CI/workflow logic.

Overview
Adds qualified version support to Release – Draft by introducing a qualifier input and a bump-type=none option, validating qualifier format, composing the final VERSION from the base semver + optional qualifier, and failing fast if the computed version would be unchanged.

Adjusts the draft PR creation to work off the selected dispatch branch (checkout and PR base) and updates branch naming to release-prep/<version>.

Extends Release – Publish to run on workstation/* branches and sets GitHub release prerelease/makeLatest based on whether VERSION contains a qualifier; updates CHANGELOG.md and rewrites RELEASE.md to document the new qualified-release flow.

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit a53d764. Bugbot is set up for automated code reviews on this repo. Configure here.}

[sonarqubecloud]

Quality Gate passed

Issues
0 New issues
0 Accepted issues

Measures
0 Security Hotspots
0.0% Coverage on New Code
0.0% Duplication on New Code

See analysis details on SonarQube Cloud