Reading over #25457 I wish we had workflow where we can immediately backport fixes to 1.2.X once the fix is on main. This way we do not need to do a big interactive rebase when we release. We would only need to update the authors list and then cut a release directly from 1.2.X.

I think the only thing stopping us from directly back-porting fixes to upstream/1.2.X is that it updates the documentation right away. In that case, I see two ways around this:

1. A new doc/1.2.X branch that gets deployed to the docs. doc/1.2.X will always be behind 1.2.X. When we release, sync doc/1.2.X up with 1.2.X.
2. A new dev/1.2.X that we backport fixes to. dev/1.2.X will always be ahead of 1.2.X. When we release, sync 1.2.X up with dev/1.2.X.

I know this adds a little more process, but I think making it easier to cut bug fix releases.