docs(no-story): prevent merge conflicts when generating docs for old branches

[baileympearson]

Description

What is changing?

When we generate docs for an old branch (5.x for example), we get merge conflicts because the release files in our static docs site are out-of-sync with main.

Our docs build script already reads these files in, updates the contents and writes them back out. We can prevent merge conflicts by first updating the files on the target branch (5.x for example) with the contents from main. Then, when we generate the docs we update the contents of the files already accounting for changes on main.

Hypothetical example: docs generation for a new minor, 5.19 (random version number > our existing latest 5.x)

Current workflow:

• switch to the 5.x branch
• generate docs for 5.19 (new minor)
• merge the changes to 5.x
• open a PR against main, cherry-picking these changes in
• resolve the merge conflicts in releases.toml/json that arise because main has additional releases (6.0) that 5.x doesn't have

Proposed workflow:

• switch to 5.x branch (needed because the release contains changes only present for 5.x)
• generate docs. This pulls in the releases.toml/json from main before updating them.
• commit the changes
• cherry-pick to main with no merge conflicts

Is there new documentation needed for these changes?

What is the motivation for this change?

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