buzz/RELEASING.md

Releasing Buzz

Buzz has three independent release lanes. Desktop and relay use release PRs. Mobile uses immutable release-candidate tags cut from remote main by default, with an optional stable source branch:

Lane	Entry point	Artifact
Desktop	just release-desktop <version>	Packaged desktop app (signed/notarized macOS, unsigned Windows, and Linux)
Relay	just release-relay	ghcr.io/block/buzz container image
Mobile	scripts/mobile-release.sh candidate X.Y.Z	Exact mobile-vX.Y.Z-rc.N source identity

The lanes version independently. Desktop reads its manifests, relay reads its crate manifest, and mobile derives both source and marketing version from the exact candidate tag. Mobile candidate tags are pushed by a human release manager, not by CI or a GitHub App. The handoff to the private buzz-releases pipeline remains manual because OSS CI cannot trigger private CI.

Quick Start

Prepare desktop releases locally from an up-to-date, clean main checkout:

just release-desktop 0.5.3

The recipe generates the immutable candidate and opens or updates its pull request. Candidate branch creation uses the operator's GitHub permissions; the release App is intentionally limited to creating protected release tags.

# Relay release
just release-relay
just release-relay 0.4.0

# Publish the next mobile candidate from the exact current remote main commit
# (requires bypass of the mobile tag ruleset, see Mobile below)
scripts/mobile-release.sh candidate 0.5.0

Desktop uses an immutable generated candidate PR; relay continues using its metadata PR. Mobile does not. Each mobile-vX.Y.Z-rc.N tag is an immutable candidate and the artifact of record. Optional stable branches use mobile-vMAJOR.MINOR. There is no stable mobile tag alias, finalization step, or mobile GitHub Release.

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How It Works

Desktop

1. Run just release-desktop <version> from a clean, up-to-date main checkout. The script creates one deterministic candidate commit and records both its frozen base and the verified prior release ledger in candidate metadata.
2. Review the exact candidate SHA, complete changelog, and CI. Regenerating or pushing the branch creates a new candidate and requires checks to run again.
3. Squash merge the PR after all protected-branch checks pass. The merge is the human authorization event; an authorized owner/admin bypass is treated the same way. Unrelated changes reaching main do not invalidate the reviewed candidate.
4. auto-tag-on-release-pr-merge verifies the closed event against GitHub's PR identity, validates candidate content, and proves every required check came from its trusted producer and was successful when the PR merged. It creates desktop-v<version> at the exact reviewed PR head—not the squash commit. Retries accept that tag only at the same SHA and never move it. GitHub does not expose when an individual check rerun was created, so an ordinary rerun after merge deliberately makes tag verification fail closed; inspect that run and create a new candidate version rather than retrying the blocked tag.
5. The tag triggers release.yml. It builds and stages all platform artifacts, publishes the versioned release only after the complete set succeeds, then updates the rolling updater manifest last for stable versions.

Because squash merging leaves immutable candidate tags on side history, the next release uses validated prior candidate metadata as its ledger boundary. It includes unrelated commits after the prior frozen base and excludes exactly the prior release's recorded squash commit; tag ancestry is deliberately irrelevant.

Relay

1. just release-relay runs locally on main, creates or updates a relay-release/<version> PR, bumps crates/buzz-relay/Cargo.toml, regenerates Cargo.lock, and updates the relay changelog.
2. Merge the PR. auto-tag-on-release-pr-merge pushes relay-v<version>.
3. The tag triggers docker.yml. Stable releases update the version aliases and latest; prereleases do not. Each release also publishes an optimized, symbol-bearing image under matching debug- tags (for example, debug-0.3.0 and debug-latest) for native profiling. The ordinary tags remain stripped and are the default for deployments that do not need it.

Every push to main continues to publish the rolling relay :main and :sha-<7> tags, plus matching :debug-main and :debug-sha-<7> variants.

Mobile

1. Publish a candidate. From a clean checkout whose origin is the canonical block/buzz repository, run scripts/mobile-release.sh candidate X.Y.Z. The script resolves and fetches a snapshot of origin/main, derives the next number from exact remote tags for that marketing version, and publishes an annotated mobile-vX.Y.Z-rc.N tag at that snapshot with git tag -a (your own tag signing configuration applies) and pushes exactly that one tag to origin. The push is allowed only because you are a bypass actor of the dedicated mobile tag ruleset 26588677 for refs/tags/mobile-*; bypass is granted to the mobile release managers. The buzz-release-bot App and its key are not involved in mobile. The script never uses the operator's checked-out commit and never moves an existing candidate. To select a historical commit, add --commit FULL_SHA. The script requires that commit to be in the selected source branch's history. Later branch advances do not change or invalidate the tag. If the push is rejected and origin has no such tag, the script deletes the local tag and fails; check that you are a bypass actor of the ruleset. If the candidate may already be on GitHub, the script keeps the local tag and says so: use the published tag rather than rerunning.
2. Build the exact tag. Enter the candidate tag as mobile_ref in the private Buzz mobile Buildkite pipeline. OSS CI deliberately cannot trigger that private pipeline. The tag supplies both source commit and release version. Flutter receives clean marketing version X.Y.Z; Buildkite's monotonically increasing build number supplies the platform build number.
3. Promote tested artifacts. Promote the already-built signed artifact for each platform through its store workflow. Record the exact tag with the build or rollout record. No source ref is changed and no final build is cut.

The iOS and Android artifacts for one marketing version may come from different RC tags. For example, iOS can ship mobile-v0.5.0-rc.2 while Android ships mobile-v0.5.0-rc.3. Each platform's exact candidate tag is its source record. There is intentionally no single selected or final candidate for the marketing version.

Optional stable release branches

For a release that needs isolation from ongoing development, create a branch such as mobile-v0.25 from an explicitly selected, verified source commit. Publish candidates from its current remote tip:

scripts/mobile-release.sh candidate 0.25.0 --source-branch mobile-v0.25

The branch must match the marketing version's major and minor components: mobile-v0.25 accepts 0.25.x, but rejects 0.26.x and 1.25.x. Without the option, the source remains main. The script validates the source; a missing branch or a commit outside its history fails rather than falling back to main. --commit FULL_SHA also works with a stable source branch. Its review and check protections bind everyone except the mobile release managers, who bypass them: a release manager can push an unreviewed commit to a stable branch and tag it as a candidate. The private pipeline still builds only the resulting immutable candidate tag.

For the October 2026 stabilization period, all distributed mobile builds, including Company Portal dogfood builds, must come from mobile-v0.25 until after the conference. Do not upload builds from main or a later minor version that would displace the stable dogfood build. The branch starts from mobile-v0.24.0-rc.2, the source of uploaded iOS 0.24.0 (7).

General fix PRs must target main and land there first. At each fix landing, ask the release owner whether to backport the merged commit to the stable branch. For each explicitly approved fix, cherry-pick with -x --signoff onto a backport branch and open a backport-only PR targeting the stable branch. Require review and passing checks before merging that PR. Preserve the original commit provenance and validate the resulting stable source. A correction for a regression introduced by an earlier backport may target the stable branch directly; identify the faulty backport and keep the correction scoped to that regression. The same review and checks apply. Never merge main wholesale. Remote agents and App Clip are post-conference work. There is no preselected fix list and no requirement to create a stable branch for every minor release.

The initial 0.25.0 candidate pins that baseline with --commit. The second candidate uses an empty commit above that baseline to verify that the existing pipeline builds a commit outside main. Verify identical source trees, absence of that commit from remote main, and the exact tag, commit, marketing version and build number in the uploaded artifacts. Upload and external TestFlight review do not establish production App Store approval.

mobile/pubspec.yaml keeps 0.0.0+1 only as a valid, visibly non-release fallback for local development and validation builds. Release jobs always inject both version fields. mobile/CHANGELOG.md is retained as historical release data. It is not a release ledger for this flow.

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Version Sources

Lane	Release version authority
Desktop	desktop/package.json and synchronized desktop manifests
Relay	crates/buzz-relay/Cargo.toml
Mobile	Exact mobile-vX.Y.Z-rc.N remote tag

just bump-desktop-version <version> updates the desktop manifests and regenerates their lockfiles. just bump-relay-version <version> updates the relay crate and regenerates Cargo.lock. Mobile has no bump recipe or release-metadata PR.

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Signed macOS Canary

Use the manual Signed macOS Canary workflow when you need an Apple Silicon build of current main for explicit testing without publishing a release:

gh workflow run signed-macos-canary.yml --repo block/buzz --ref main

The workflow derives a -test.<run-number> version, signs and notarizes the DMG, verifies it with Gatekeeper, and uploads it as a short-lived Actions artifact with seven-day retention. Because this is a public repository, any signed-in GitHub user can download that artifact while it exists; it is unpublished, not private. The workflow has no release permissions, does not create or move tags, and cannot update buzz-desktop-latest or latest.json.

Download the artifact from the completed run:

gh run download <run-id> --repo block/buzz --name <artifact-name>

The workflow intentionally accepts only main. Use the normal release process for distributable builds or builds from an immutable release tag.

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Release Retry

release.yml has no manual dispatch and cannot build from main or another caller-selected ref. If a run for an existing immutable desktop-v<version> tag fails, rerun that failed workflow from GitHub Actions (or use gh run rerun <run-id> --failed --repo block/buzz). A rerun repairs the versioned draft if publication did not complete. It does not promote that version to the auto-updater; promotion is a separate manual action. Do not recreate, move, or push the immutable tag again.

Mobile intentionally has no branch or arbitrary-ref fallback. The private Buildkite pipeline accepts only an exact candidate tag.

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Internal Releases

For mobile, trigger the private Release Mobile pipeline with an exact RC tag for the platform build being cut. For desktop, start Release Desktop and enter the exact public source tag as desktop_ref=desktop-v<version>; a generic v<version> tag is intentionally rejected. See the buzz-releases README for the rest of the private pipeline contract.

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What Gets Published

Desktop publishes two GitHub releases:

1. desktop-v<version>: the user-facing release with installers and the exact updater-manifest.json promotion candidate. Publishing this release does not expose it through in-app auto-update.
2. buzz-desktop-latest: the rolling auto-updater release. Its latest.json changes only through the manual promotion workflow.

Promote an OSS desktop release to auto-update

After installing and testing the published desktop-v<version> artifacts, run Promote OSS Desktop Auto-Update from the main branch and enter the exact stable X.Y.Z version. The workflow validates the immutable tag and release, the retained manifest and every referenced updater asset, and requires the version to be newer than the currently promoted version before replacing buzz-desktop-latest/latest.json. Same-version retries succeed only when the manifest is identical; downgrades are rejected.

Withholding promotion leaves existing clients on the previous version. If a promoted release is bad, ship and promote a higher patch version; changing the manifest to an older version does not downgrade clients that already updated.

Mobile publishes only annotated mobile-vX.Y.Z-rc.N git tags. Store artifacts and rollout records retain the exact tag they used. Mobile does not publish a GitHub Release or a stable mobile-vX.Y.Z alias.

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Platform Support

The release workflow builds two separate macOS DMGs: Apple Silicon (darwin-aarch64, the release job) and Intel (darwin-x86_64, the release-macos-x64 job), an unsigned Windows x64 NSIS installer (its filename includes _alpha-unsigned), and Linux .deb and .AppImage packages. Both macOS DMGs are codesigned, notarized, and attached to the same desktop-v<version> release. Intel users download the _x64.dmg.

The Linux AppImage is post-processed by desktop/scripts/fix-appimage.sh, which strips infra libraries over-bundled by linuxdeploy (they crash on Mesa 25+ / GLib 2.88 distros; see tauri-apps/tauri#15665) and re-signs the artifact. As a result the AppImage relies on the host's Wayland/GStreamer/graphics stack and requires GLib >= 2.72 (Ubuntu 22.04 or newer). The release-linux job builds inside a ubuntu:22.04 container for broad GLIBC compatibility.

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Prerequisites

• Write access to the block/buzz GitHub repository
• An origin remote whose configured URL is the canonical block/buzz repository
• gh CLI authenticated with permission to push the candidate branch and open its pull request
• The Default main ruleset configured for squash-only merging, strict required checks, stale-review dismissal, and the Desktop Release Candidate check
• Release tag ruleset 14378754 active for all tags (~ALL), with creation, update, deletion, and non-fast-forward protections and buzz-release-bot as its sole always-bypass actor. It must exclude refs/tags/mobile-*: rulesets stack, so otherwise it rejects release managers' mobile tag pushes. scripts/mobile-release.sh checks that exclusion before tagging.
• The buzz-release-bot App credentials configured for GitHub Actions (desktop, relay, and chart lanes only; mobile does not use them)
• The following GitHub Actions variables and secrets configured for the desktop release lane:

  Name	Kind	Purpose
  BUZZ_RELEASE_TAGGER_CLIENT_ID	Variable	GitHub App client ID used to create protected release tags
  BUZZ_RELEASE_TAGGER_PRIVATE_KEY	Secret	GitHub App private key
  OSX_CODESIGN_ROLE	Secret	macOS signing role used by block/apple-codesign-action
  CODESIGN_S3_BUCKET	Secret	macOS signing exchange bucket
  BUZZ_UPDATER_PUBLIC_KEY or SPROUT_UPDATER_PUBLIC_KEY	Secret	Tauri updater public key
  TAURI_SIGNING_PRIVATE_KEY	Secret	Tauri updater private key
  TAURI_SIGNING_PRIVATE_KEY_PASSWORD	Secret	Password for the private key

Mobile candidate publication requires being a bypass actor of the mobile tag ruleset 26588677 ("Restrict Mobile Tags"), recorded as MOBILE_RELEASE_TAG_RULESET_ID in scripts/release-rulesets.sh. Bypass is granted to the mobile release managers. The ruleset must be active for refs/tags/mobile-* (or the narrower refs/tags/mobile-v*), with creation, update, deletion, and non-fast-forward protections and no exclusions. The buzz-release-bot App must not be a bypass actor. On every publication the script checks the public policy and that the caller's effective current_user_can_bypass is always; GitHub hides the bypass actor list from non-admin tokens, so an administrator audits that list. Stable sources additionally require active branch ruleset 19321162 covering refs/heads/mobile-v*, with no exclusions, deletion and force-push prevention, at least one approval, stale-approval dismissal, last-push approval, resolved review threads, and strict required Mobile and DCO Check checks. The mobile release managers are also its bypass actors, so they can publish from a stable branch; the ruleset still forces review and checks on everyone else. Because of that bypass, a release manager can push an unreviewed commit to a stable branch and publish it as a candidate; nothing else enforces review for them. The script verifies the public policy on every publication but does not check bypass.

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Troubleshooting

The desktop candidate is stale or cannot be squash merged

Do not update the branch manually and do not weaken the ruleset. Run just release-desktop <version> again from current main; this regenerates the candidate, reruns CI, and requires a fresh trusted approval on the new exact head. The post-merge verifier refuses to tag a squash whose parent differs from the recorded candidate base or whose tree differs from the validated PR head.

Local just release-desktop fails with "must be on main branch"

Switch to main and pull latest before running the release recipe.

Local just release-desktop fails with "working tree is dirty"

Commit or stash your changes before running the release recipe.

New commits land after publishing a mobile candidate

Run scripts/mobile-release.sh candidate <version> again after the intended fix reaches the intended remote source branch. Use the same --source-branch option for a stable release. The command publishes a new immutable RC tag at the new exact remote commit. Continue referring to each tested or shipped platform artifact by its own exact tag.

The source branch advances during candidate publication

Publication remains pinned to the selected SHA. The script verifies that it is an ancestor of a resolved source-branch snapshot, then creates, pushes, and verifies an immutable annotated tag for that exact SHA. It verifies the tag, not the branch's later tip. A newer commit does not require retrying or creating another candidate. Missing or unverifiable ancestry still fails closed.

A mobile candidate command selects the wrong RC number

Do not retry by moving or deleting a tag. Inspect the exact remote mobile-v* tags and resolve the unexpected state. Candidate numbers are monotonically increasing remote identities.

A mobile candidate publication is rejected by repository rules

Confirm you are a bypass actor of the active mobile tag ruleset 26588677 (the mobile release managers). The script removes its local tag after a rejected push, so retry after an administrator fixes your access. Do not add yourself to the bypass list, grant the App bypass, or weaken update or deletion protection. Existing candidate tags must remain immutable.

Auto-updater reports "no update available"

Verify that the buzz-desktop-latest release exists and contains a valid latest.json. The manifest covers all four platform keys (darwin-aarch64, darwin-x86_64, linux-x86_64, windows-x86_64); a missing entry usually means that platform's release job failed. Check the workflow run.