Publishing content re-publishes ALL segment variations (including e.g. stopped A/B test variants)

[cornehoskam]

Which Umbraco version are you using?

17.2.2

Bug summary

When a content node is published (Save and Publish), Property.PublishValues(culture) is called with the default segment = "*", which copies all segment variations from draft to published — including segments that belong to stopped or completed A/B tests.

This means there is no way for packages (like Umbraco Engage) to "unpublish" a single segment variation on a content node while keeping its draft data for backoffice review. Any segment data that exists in the draft will be re-promoted to the published version on the next publish, even if it was intentionally removed from the published version.

Specifics

See Bug Summary.

There is no mechanism to exclude specific segments from being published, nor a way to mark a segment as "unpublished" so that it survives a subsequent publish operation.

Steps to reproduce

1. Create a content node with a document type that varies by segment.
2. Add property data for a custom segment (e.g., engage_variant_1) — this can be done programmatically via IContentService.Save() or through Umbraco Engage's A/B testing feature.
3. Publish the content node — the segment data is now in both draft and published versions.
4. Remove the segment data from the published version only (e.g., by deleting the umbracoPropertyData rows where versionId = publishedVersionId and segment = 'engage_variant_1'). Refresh the content cache.
5. Verify the segment is no longer in the published content cache — confirmed, it's gone.
6. Now edit the content node (e.g., change the page title) and click Save and Publish.
7. Check the published content cache again — the segment data is back. PublishValues(culture) re-copied it from the draft.

Expected result / actual result

Expected: Publishing a content node should not re-publish segment variations that were intentionally removed from the published version. Ideally, there should be a way to "publish" and "unpublish" a specific segment (similar to how individual cultures can be unpublished), or at minimum a hook/notification that allows packages to prevent specific segments from being published.

Actual: Every Save and Publish operation promotes ALL draft segment data to the published version unconditionally, because PublishValues defaults to segment = "*". There is no way to exclude specific segments, and no event/notification to intercept and prevent this. This makes it impossible for packages to manage the publish state of individual segments.

[AndyButland]

I'll move this to a discussion @cornehoskam as I don't think this is really a bug, and what you see is currently as expected. Rather its a long standing limitation of segment variants that they don't participate in publishing and unpublishing (like language variants do).

I would imagine it's quite a big job to support this - but that doesn't mean to say we shouldn't of course discuss it when we can get the brains together and see what could be done.