I created a 'next' branch to release the 'next' version of my package to npm. which i think is a pretty darn cool feature of semantic-release. However, now I'm a bit unclear on what I need to do to properly move that over to my master branch to ensure it now becomes the 'latest' tag? Can I do this without cutting a new release and just update the tag? Or is there some other magical semantic-y way of doing this?
IF you use semantic-release version 16.0.0 (currently in beta) you would have to merge the next branch into the master branch. semantic-release will take care of making the version available on @next dist-tag to @latest.
Be aware that this merge has to preserve the Git tags and if you use the GitHub "Rebase and Merge" is won't be the case as each commit will be rewritten.