[0.87] Fix skipped post-publish jobs in release mode

[cipolleschi]

Target Branch

0.87

Link to commit or PR to be picked

react/react-native#57480

Description

During the 0.87.0-rc.0 release, the npm packages published successfully (publish_react_native ✓), but every release-only downstream job in publish-npm.yml was skipped: post_publish, generate_changelog, bump_podfile_lock, and create_draft_release. As a result the community template was not published, rn-diff-purge was not triggered, npm/Maven verification did not run, the changelog was not generated, Podfile.lock was not bumped, and no draft GitHub release was created.

Root cause: those four jobs use a bare if: needs.determine_mode.outputs.mode == 'release'. GitHub implicitly ANDs a success() gate onto conditions with no status-check function, and success() evaluates to false when there is a skipped job in the dependency graph. In release mode build_android (a dependency of publish_react_native) is always skipped, so the downstream jobs skipped even after a fully successful publish. The fix applies the same always() + explicit .result == 'success' pattern that publish_react_native already uses.

This is a release-tooling hotfix: it affects every 0.87 release (rc.1, final, and future patches), so it needs to be on 0.87-stable for the post-publish automation to run correctly.

• Backport PR against 0.87-stable: [0.87] Fix skipped post-publish jobs in release mode react/react-native#57480
• Corresponding main PR (in flight): Fix skipped post-publish jobs in release mode react/react-native#57479

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