Improve tests on Release to prevent dev merges into release branches

[mmartin24]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Current Behavior

As a need for QA I created a new chart 0.12.9-beta.1 to test into 2.11-head (note: NOT on 2.11.7) on the previous day to the release of Fleet 0.12.8 and it successfully managed to build: https://github.com/rancher/rancher/actions/runs/18684812883

Chart is also in the assets:

https://github.com/rancher/charts/blob/dev-v2.11/assets/fleet/fleet-106.1.7%2Bup0.12.9-beta.1.tgz

However, the chart is not found when attempting to deploy it in Rancher.

k logs -n cattle-system rancher-6656c98b66-qrxdh 

2025/10/22 09:31:16 [INFO] Starting cluster controllers for local
2025/10/22 09:31:18 [ERROR] Failed to install system chart fleet-crd: no chart version found for fleet-crd-106.1.7+up0.12.9-beta.1
2025/10/22 09:31:18 [ERROR] Failed to install system chart fleet: no chart version found for fleet-106.1.7+up0.12.9-beta.1

Logs proving is not visible on Rancher head:
rancher_2.11_fleet_0.12.9-beta-1.log

The chart did work as standalone, but this is another issue.

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Now the issue is that this chart should not have reached 2.11.7

Adding comment from @thardeck

The reason for the issue is that during the Rancher release, the charts branch are switched from dev to the release branches.

As you can see here for Rancher 2.11.
Rancher 2.10 was not released and is still on the dev-v2.10 branch.

After Rancher is released, they usually switch the branch back, but it was not-
I am just wondering why the release/v2.11 was not locked during this phase, so this merge would have been prevented

Expected Behavior

Prevent these types of merges during release

Steps To Reproduce

No response

Environment

- Architecture:
- Fleet Version:
- Cluster:
  - Provider:
  - Options:
  - Kubernetes Version:

Logs

Anything else?

No response