ci: make a release a shipment rather than a merge

release.yml fired on every push to main, so the trigger was "a PR was
merged" and nothing else decided. That is a version per unit of *work*
rather than per *shipment*: eight releases in twenty-two hours, v0.0.1
through v0.3.1, for one session -- each fanning out to four publishers on
a runner with capacity 1, so roughly forty packaging jobs shipped three
issues while ordinary PR CI queued behind them. pacman, Homebrew and
Obtainium see every one.

The push trigger is gone and workflow_dispatch, which was already there
and already worked, is the whole mechanism. Nothing else had to change to
batch releases, because semantic-release already reads every commit since
the last tag: five fixes and two feats become one minor release with all
seven in the notes. Release frequency was only ever how often this file
fired.

This is the rule index-artifact.yml states and is the other instance of:
a job that mutates state which cannot be rebuilt in ten minutes is
triggered deliberately, not by a push. A release here is a tag, a Gitea
release, an Arch package, a Homebrew formula, a signed APK and desktop
assets -- and an Android version going backwards costs the user their
library.

`dry_run` is what makes a manual trigger usable: the point of pulling a
lever by hand is being able to look first, so the input runs
semantic-release --dry-run -- the version and the notes, no tag, no
release, no publishers. Anything but the literal string "true" releases
for real, because a typo in a dispatch box must not silently turn a
shipment into a green no-op.

Two alternatives were considered and rejected, both recorded on the
issue. A `beta` integration branch relocates the trigger rather than
removing one: it needs a second protected branch carrying the same
required checks, and it *adds* a full check + e2e run per batch on the
very runner whose queue is the complaint. A schedule batches without
anyone having to remember, but puts the decision back on a timer, which
is the thing being removed.

Closes #115

.gitea/workflows/release.yml

@@ -1,11 +1,36 @@
 name: Release
 
 # The sixth workflow, and the one that decides whether the other three
-# run at all.  On every push to main it reads the Conventional Commits
-# since the last tag, and if any of them is releasable it writes the
-# changelog, pushes the tag, and creates the Gitea release whose body is
-# that changelog section.  The publishing workflows are keyed on `v*`, so
-# the tag push is what starts them.
+# run at all.  It reads the Conventional Commits since the last tag, and
+# if any of them is releasable it writes the changelog, pushes the tag,
+# and creates the Gitea release whose body is that changelog section.
+# The publishing workflows are keyed on `v*`, so the tag push is what
+# starts them.
+#
+# **It is triggered by hand, and there is deliberately no `push`
+# trigger.**  There was one, on `main`, which made the trigger "a PR was
+# merged" and nothing else: eight releases in twenty-two hours
+# (v0.0.1 -> v0.3.1) for one session's work, each fanning out to four
+# publishers on a runner with capacity 1, so ~40 packaging jobs shipped
+# three issues and ordinary PR CI queued behind them.  A version per
+# merged PR is a version per unit of *work*, not per *shipment*, and
+# pacman, Homebrew and Obtainium see every one.
+#
+# Nothing else had to change to batch them: semantic-release already
+# reads every commit since the last tag, so five fixes and two feats
+# become one minor release with all seven in the notes.  Release
+# frequency was only ever how often this file fired.
+#
+# This is the rule `index-artifact.yml` states and is the other instance
+# of: **a job that mutates state which cannot be rebuilt in ten minutes
+# is triggered deliberately, not by a push.**  A release here is a tag,
+# a Gitea release, an Arch package, a Homebrew formula, a signed APK and
+# desktop assets — and an Android version going backwards costs the user
+# their library (docs/android-release.md).
+#
+# A schedule was considered and rejected: a cron batches without anyone
+# having to remember, but it puts the decision back on a timer, which is
+# the thing being removed.
 #
 # **Why the tag is pushed with PACKAGE_TOKEN and not the Actions token.**
 # Gitea, like GitHub, does not start a workflow from a ref pushed by a
@@ -19,9 +44,12 @@ name: Release
 # instead.
 
 on:
-  push:
-    branches: [main]
   workflow_dispatch:
+    inputs:
+      dry_run:
+        description: "Report what would be released and stop"
+        required: false
+        default: "false"
 
 # Cutting a tag is not a thing to cancel halfway: a superseded run must
 # finish, not be killed between `git push --tags` and the release POST.
@@ -163,14 +191,32 @@ jobs:
       # been right, the tag would have been right, every job would have
       # been green, and the release body would have been empty.  Check the
       # notes, not the exit code, before moving any of these.
+      # The point of a manual trigger is deliberateness, and deliberate
+      # means being able to look before pulling the lever.  `--dry-run`
+      # reports the version and the notes and writes nothing: no tag, no
+      # release, no publishers.  `make release-dry` is the same answer
+      # locally; this is it from the runner, against the same commit and
+      # the same tag history, which is what actually decides.
       - name: Run semantic-release
         if: steps.guard.outputs.skip == 'false'
         working-directory: /src
+        env:
+          DRY_RUN: ${{ inputs.dry_run }}
         run: |
           set -eu
           git config user.name  "yellowjacket-ci"
           git config user.email "yj@yellowjacket.app"
 
+          # Anything but a literal "true" releases for real.  A typo in a
+          # dispatch box must not silently turn a shipment into a no-op
+          # that reports success — the failure worth avoiding is the one
+          # where nothing happens and the run is green.
+          dry=""
+          if [ "${DRY_RUN:-false}" = "true" ]; then
+            echo "DRY RUN — no tag will be pushed and no release created"
+            dry="--dry-run"
+          fi
+
           npx --yes \
             -p semantic-release@25 \
             -p @semantic-release/commit-analyzer@13 \
@@ -178,5 +224,5 @@ jobs:
             -p @semantic-release/changelog@7 \
             -p @semantic-release/exec@7 \
             -p conventional-changelog-conventionalcommits@9 \
-            semantic-release \
+            semantic-release $dry \
               --repository-url "https://x-access-token:${PACKAGE_TOKEN}@${SERVER_URL#https://}/${REPO}.git"