Releasing the consumer code
The provider has now successfully deployed to prod the changes requested by the consumer.
Refresh the example pact page in API Hub for Contract Testing to see that the feat/new-field pact has a successful verification from the master provider.
Open the terminal for the consumer project.
Run:
git checkout master git merge feat/new-field git push origin master
Open up the consumer build in Github Actions. This build will pass, and the consumer will be able to deploy to production as the production version of the provider already supports this new feature.
Some ideas on how to communicate that the feature pact has been successfully verified to the consumer team
The most elegant solution for this is to create a webhook for the 'provider verification succeeded' event. Some common approaches are to use chat notifications or Github/Bitbucket commit statuses that show up in the PR page for a branch. You can read more about that here: http://blog.pact.io/2018/07/16/publishing-pact-verification-statuses-to-github/
Expected state by the end of this step
The new feature deployed to production for both consumer and provider.
Conclusion
Even though the new expectations from the consumer come first, the provider still has to release the code to support the new feature before the new features in the consumer can be released.