docs: the scheduled refresh does NOT republish nothing (#3265)
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Step 4 asserted that when the base has not moved the refresh is "a ~13s
no-op that republishes nothing", and that this no-op was the point. The
first half is false and was written without being tested.

Run 4934, the first real fire: every content step reported CACHED and
both bases resolved to unchanged pinned digests, yet all three :latest
tags took a new manifest digest anyway.

  fabledcurator        4ea5265ba017 -> 380e504de0fa
  fabledcurator-ml     6e7cfc0c09fd -> 6b2eefc301d8
  fabledcurator-agent  44920e0af1f3 -> 54accbeb52ed

buildkit mints a fresh image config per run, so identical layers get
republished under a new config blob. Storage cost is trivial; the cost
that matters is that a :latest digest change stops meaning "something is
different", and :c-<sha> is handed a new manifest to diverge from every
Sunday for no reason.

Corrects the workflow comment (x3) and ci-requirements.md to say what
actually happens. Filed as #3265 with the candidate fixes; the likely one
is a deterministic SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH off the value artifacts.sh already
derives, which would make "same source, same version" into "same source,
same bytes".

The rest of step 4 verified clean on the same run: the guard passed
(HEAD is main (499720d), `git checkout -B main`) — so this runner DOES
evaluate the env context inside `with:` — the tag list was :latest alone
with no :c-<sha>, and the repoint step correctly found nothing to write.
This commit is contained in:
2026-08-30 12:57:06 -04:00
parent 6663e06aa6
commit 0a5bbe81dc
2 changed files with 73 additions and 49 deletions
+13 -10
View File
@@ -196,16 +196,19 @@ per `docs/process.md`'s "add deps to the image when used by >1 project".
push path needed no change for this, because the repoint already excluded
the source tag — the same rule that keeps the label readable also keeps a
refresh from being undone.
- **`pull: true` on the scheduled path only** is the actual mechanism. If a
base tag moved, the `FROM` layer's cache key changes and everything above
it rebuilds; if it did not, the registry cache satisfies the whole graph
and the refresh is a ~13s no-op that republishes nothing. That no-op is the
point — `:latest` should change when there is something new in it, not
every Sunday. The known lag: a Debian package update inside the `apt-get
install` layer while the base tag stands still is not caught. Closing it
needs `no-cache: true`, which buys weekly churn for it; the official
python/cuda images rebuild with those updates baked in, so this is a lag
rather than a hole.
- **`pull: true` on the scheduled path only** is the mechanism: a moved base
tag changes the `FROM` layer's cache key and everything above it rebuilds.
**It does not currently make the unmoved case free.** Measured on the first
real fire (run 4934, 2026-08-30): every content step reported `CACHED` and
the bases resolved to unchanged digests, yet all three `:latest` tags got a
NEW manifest digest, because buildkit mints a fresh image config per run and
republishes identical layers under it. So `:latest` is rewritten weekly
whether or not anything changed, and `:c-<sha>` is handed a new manifest to
diverge from on the same cadence — a digest change stops meaning anything.
Tracked as #3265; the likely fix is a deterministic `SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH`.
Separately not caught: a Debian package update inside the `apt-get install`
layer while the base tag stands still — a lag rather than a hole, since the
official python/cuda images rebuild with those updates baked in.
- **`FC_CHANNEL` and `FC_VERSION` are build args, not runtime settings.**
`build.yml` passes them to the web image only — the ml and agent images have
nothing to report them to. `/api/health` returns both, the foot of Settings