Merge pull request 'Make a release a shipment rather than a merge' (#116) from ci/115-manual-release into main

Closes #115

.gitea/workflows/android-apk.yml

@@ -139,6 +139,23 @@ jobs:
             echo "skip=true" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
             exit 0
           fi
+
+          # Nor is a prerelease, and this trigger is `v*`, which matches
+          # `v0.4.0-beta.1`.  Two reasons it is worst here.  The APK goes
+          # to the *generic* registry, which is readable without
+          # credentials so Obtainium can poll a plain URL — a beta would
+          # be offered to every device on it.  And the versionCode maths
+          # below splits on dots and would read "1" out of "0-beta",
+          # producing a code that is wrong rather than a build that
+          # fails: Android orders releases by that integer and refuses
+          # anything not greater than what is installed.
+          case "$v" in
+            *-*)
+              echo "v$v is a prerelease; not publishing an APK for it"
+              echo "skip=true" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
+              exit 0
+              ;;
+          esac
           echo "skip=false" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
 
           # Android orders releases by an integer and refuses anything

.gitea/workflows/arch-package.yml

@@ -72,6 +72,22 @@ jobs:
             exit 0
           fi
 
+          # A prerelease is not a shipment either, and this trigger is
+          # `v*` — which matches `v0.4.0-beta.1`.  Nothing produces one
+          # today; the guard is here because the thing that would is
+          # semantic-release's `prerelease: true` channel, a one-line
+          # change in .releaserc.yml whose blast radius is four public
+          # package channels.  Same argument as release.yml's
+          # `chore(release):` guard: cheap, against something a future
+          # edit turns on somewhere else entirely.
+          case "$v" in
+            *-*)
+              echo "$v is a prerelease; not packaging it for pacman"
+              echo "skip=true" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
+              exit 0
+              ;;
+          esac
+
           echo "skip=false" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
           echo "tag=$v"     >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
           echo "building $v"

.gitea/workflows/desktop-assets.yml

@@ -95,6 +95,19 @@ jobs:
             exit 0
           fi
 
+          # Nor is a prerelease, and this trigger is `v*`, which matches
+          # `v0.4.0-beta.1`.  The mildest of the four — assets attach to
+          # the prerelease's own Gitea release and no package manager
+          # reads them — but four workflows sharing one trigger should
+          # share one answer about what a shipment is.
+          case "$v" in
+            *-*)
+              echo "$v is a prerelease; not attaching desktop assets"
+              echo "skip=true" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
+              exit 0
+              ;;
+          esac
+
           echo "skip=false"   >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
           echo "tag=$v"       >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
           echo "version=${v#v}" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"

.gitea/workflows/homebrew-formula.yml

@@ -56,6 +56,18 @@ jobs:
             echo "skip=true" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
             exit 0
           fi
+
+          # Nor is a prerelease, and this trigger is `v*`, which matches
+          # `v0.4.0-beta.1`.  It matters most here of the four: the tap
+          # is public, and `brew upgrade` would offer a beta to everyone
+          # on it.
+          case "$VERSION" in
+            *-*)
+              echo "$TAG is a prerelease; not syncing it to a public tap"
+              echo "skip=true" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
+              exit 0
+              ;;
+          esac
           echo "skip=false" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
 
           TARBALL="${SOURCE_TARBALL_BASE}/${TAG}.tar.gz"

.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"

.releaserc.yml

@@ -1,8 +1,19 @@
 # semantic-release configuration.
 #
-# Runs on pushes to main from .gitea/workflows/release.yml: determine the
-# version from the Conventional Commits since the last tag, write the
-# changelog, commit it, push the tag, and create the Gitea release.
+# Run by hand from .gitea/workflows/release.yml, which has no push
+# trigger: determine the version from the Conventional Commits since the
+# last tag, write the changelog, push the tag, and create the Gitea
+# release.  A release is a shipment rather than a merge, and the commits
+# accumulate until someone says so -- this file needs to know nothing
+# about that, because reading everything since the last tag is what it
+# already did.
+#
+# `branches` is main and only main.  A `prerelease: true` channel is the
+# obvious next edit here and is the one to think twice about: all four
+# publishing workflows trigger on `v*`, which matches `v0.4.0-beta.1`.
+# They carry a prerelease guard now, so the failure is a clean skip
+# rather than a beta in a public tap -- but they are four separate files
+# and this is the line that would turn them on.
 #
 # **There is no `@semantic-release/github` plugin here and there must not
 # be.** Gitea's API is `/api/v1` and is not GitHub's surface. The Gitea

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -5,15 +5,20 @@ The changelog is the releases page:
 <https://git.ljones.me/yonlu/yellowjacket/releases>
 
 Every release there is generated from the Conventional Commits it
-contains, by `.gitea/workflows/release.yml` on merge to `main`. Each one
-carries its notes as its body, grouped by change type, with a link to the
-commit behind every line.
+contains, by `.gitea/workflows/release.yml`. Each one carries its notes
+as its body, grouped by change type, with a link to the commit behind
+every line.
+
+That workflow is **run by hand**, so a release holds everything merged
+since the last one rather than one PR's worth. It used to fire on every
+push to `main`, which made a version per merged PR (issue #115).
 
 **This file is not generated and is not a copy of that.** `main` is a
 protected branch, so nothing pushes a changelog commit back to it — and a
 file that claimed to be a changelog while silently never updating would
-be worse than no file at all. `make release-dry` prints what the next
-merge would release.
+be worse than no file at all. `make release-dry` prints what a release
+run would cut right now, and the workflow's own `dry_run` input answers
+the same question from CI.
 
 History before `v0.0.1` is in `git log`. The versions before it were cut
 by hand and are not on the releases page; the entries this file used to

CLAUDE.md

@@ -2309,13 +2309,53 @@ those run at all; `unclaim.yml` is housekeeping on the tracker and
 touches no code; only `ci.yml` gates, and it is the one to look at when
 deciding whether a push was healthy.
 
-**`release.yml` is the entry point for all of it.** On every push to
-`main` it reads the Conventional Commits since the last tag and, if any
+**`release.yml` is the entry point for all of it, and it is triggered by
+hand.** It reads the Conventional Commits since the last tag and, if any
 is releasable, writes the changelog, pushes the tag and creates the Gitea
 release whose body is that changelog section. `arch-package`,
 `homebrew-formula`, `android-apk` and `desktop-assets` are all keyed on
-`v*`, so **the tag push is what starts them** — nothing is released by
-hand any more.
+`v*`, so **the tag push is what starts them** — the version, the notes
+and the packaging are still nobody's manual work; *when* is the only
+decision left to a person.
+
+**It used to fire on every push to `main`, which made the trigger "a PR
+was merged".** That is a version per unit of *work* rather than per
+*shipment*: eight releases in twenty-two hours (`v0.0.1` → `v0.3.1`) for
+one session, each fanning out to four publishers on a runner with
+capacity 1 — ~40 packaging jobs to ship three issues, with ordinary PR CI
+queued behind them. Nothing else had to change to batch them, because
+**semantic-release already reads every commit since the last tag**: five
+`fix`es and two `feat`s become one minor release with all seven in the
+notes. Release frequency was only ever how often the workflow fired.
+
+This is the same rule `index-artifact.yml` states — *a job that mutates
+state which cannot be rebuilt in ten minutes is triggered deliberately,
+not by a push* — and the two are now the only workflows with no push
+trigger. 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. A `beta` integration branch was
+considered and rejected too (#115): it relocates the trigger rather than
+removing one, needs a second protected branch carrying the same required
+checks, and *adds* a full `check` + `e2e` run per batch on the very
+runner whose queue is the complaint.
+
+**`dry_run` is why the manual trigger is usable.** The point of pulling
+a lever by hand is being able to look first, so the dispatch takes a
+flag that 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 — a typo in a dispatch box must not silently
+turn a shipment into a green no-op.
+
+**A prerelease tag is not a shipment, and all four publishers now say
+so.** Their trigger is `v*`, which matches `v0.4.0-beta.1`; they guarded
+`v0.0.0` and nothing else. Nothing produces a prerelease today — the
+guard is there because the thing that would is `prerelease: true` in
+`.releaserc.yml`, one line whose blast radius is a public Homebrew tap
+and a credential-free APK registry that Obtainium polls. `android-apk`
+is the worst of the four twice over, since its `versionCode` maths
+splits on dots and would read `1` out of `0-beta` — a wrong number
+rather than a failed build, and Android refuses anything not greater
+than what is installed.
 
 Four things about it are load-bearing:
 

Makefile

@@ -192,15 +192,21 @@ skill-check: ## Fail if the agent docs name a missing make target, or AGENTS.md
 commit-check: ## Fail if a commit subject is not a Conventional Commit
 	@./scripts/commit-check.sh $(if $(RANGE),--range $(RANGE))
 
-# What a merge to main would release, without releasing it.  Reads the
-# same .releaserc.yml CI does, so "why did that not cut a version" is
-# answerable locally instead of by pushing and watching.  Needs no
-# credentials: --dry-run neither tags nor publishes.
+# What running the release workflow now would ship, without shipping it.
+# Reads the same .releaserc.yml CI does, so "why did that not cut a
+# version" is answerable locally instead of by pushing and watching.
+# Needs no credentials: --dry-run neither tags nor publishes.
+#
+# release.yml is dispatch-only, so this answers the question that
+# actually gets asked now -- what has accumulated since the last tag --
+# rather than what one merge would have done.  The workflow's own
+# `dry_run` input is the same answer from the runner, against whatever
+# main points at rather than the working tree.
 #
 # The pins must stay identical to release.yml's, which is where the note
 # on holding the conventionalcommits preset at 9 lives -- at 10 the
 # release notes come out empty with everything green.
-release-dry: ## Print the version a merge to main would release
+release-dry: ## Print the version a release run would cut right now
 	@npx --yes \
 		-p semantic-release@25 \
 		-p @semantic-release/commit-analyzer@13 \

docs/android-release.md

@@ -7,12 +7,22 @@ which is what lets Obtainium poll a plain URL with no token. It also
 attaches the same file to the Gitea release, which is what a person
 looking at the release page downloads.
 
-**Tags are not pushed by hand any more.** `.gitea/workflows/release.yml`
-reads the Conventional Commits on every merge to `main`, decides the
-version, and pushes the tag this workflow is keyed on — so releasing the
-APK means merging a `fix:` or `feat:` commit, not running `git tag`. The
-`workflow_dispatch` path below remains, for rebuilding a tag that already
-exists.
+**Tags are not pushed by hand any more, but releasing is a decision.**
+`.gitea/workflows/release.yml` reads the Conventional Commits since the
+last tag, decides the version, and pushes the tag this workflow is keyed
+on — so releasing the APK means **running that workflow**, not running
+`git tag`. It has no push trigger: merging a `fix:` or `feat:` used to
+be enough and produced a version per merged PR (issue #115). Run it with
+`dry_run` first to see what the accumulated commits would ship. The
+`workflow_dispatch` path below is a different thing and remains, for
+rebuilding a tag that already exists.
+
+**A prerelease tag is skipped here**, cleanly. This workflow triggers on
+`v*`, which matches `v0.4.0-beta.1`, and it is the one where that would
+hurt most: the APK goes to the credential-free generic registry that
+Obtainium polls, and the `versionCode` maths below splits on dots — it
+would read `1` out of `0-beta` and produce a wrong number rather than a
+failed build.
 
 ## The 1.x installs cannot be upgraded to 0.0.x
 

packaging/arch/README.md

@@ -1,10 +1,15 @@
 # YellowJacket Arch package
 
 This directory holds the `PKGBUILD` and desktop entry used to build the
-Arch Linux package. CI builds it on every push to `main` (see
+Arch Linux package. CI builds it on every **release tag** (see
 `.gitea/workflows/arch-package.yml`) and publishes it to the Gitea Arch
 package registry, from which pacman can install it directly.
 
+Tags come from `.gitea/workflows/release.yml`, which is run by hand — it
+used to fire on every push to `main`, which meant a new package per
+merged PR (issue #115). A prerelease tag (`v0.4.0-beta.1`) is skipped:
+the workflow's trigger is `v*` and matches one.
+
 ## Installing from the registry
 
 The registry is public — no login required.
@@ -58,7 +63,7 @@ this is not recommended.
 - Only the runtime package is published; the `-debug` package makepkg
   produces (detached symbols) is skipped by the workflow.
 - Package versions come from `pkgver()` in the PKGBUILD, derived from git
-  (e.g. `1.3.0.r173.g4ae5ffc-1`), so every push to `main` yields a new
+  (e.g. `1.3.0.r173.g4ae5ffc-1`), so every release tag yields a new
   version.
 - Repo priority: if another configured repo ever provides a package named
   `yellowjacket`, the repo listed **first** in `pacman.conf` wins. Force a