Closes the half of the ask the signing work didn't: a way to tell a dev
build from a main one. FC_CHANNEL is baked into the web image at build
time and /api/extension/manifest reports it as its own key, next to
version — the popup banner, the toolbar tooltip and the Settings card all
name it.
Beside the version, never inside it. A `1.0.3499884-dev` suffix is the
obvious shortcut and it is the exact failure this design comes from:
versionIsNewer parses each dotted segment with parseInt, so a suffixed
segment reads as 0, every dev build compares equal to every other, and
"no update available" stops being distinguishable from "I cannot read this
version". The comparator already degrades rather than discarding (rule
150), which is a reason not to NEED the suffix, not a licence to add one.
Two tests hold the line — one backend, asserting version and channel are
separate keys; one frontend, asserting the rendered version text stays the
bare derived number.
Optional on the read side, and absent rather than defaulted. An image
built before this field says nothing by not having the key; an image built
without a channel now says nothing the same way, so there is one absence
to handle instead of a second spelling of "unknown". Every reader drops
the label entirely when it is missing and reads exactly as it did before.
Reported verbatim rather than validated against {dev, main}: if an image
declares something else, showing what it claims helps whoever is debugging
more than dropping it would.
FC_CHANNEL is declared LAST in the Dockerfile. An ARG invalidates every
layer below it, and this is the one value that differs between the dev and
main builds of identical source — earlier, and the two channels could
never share a cached pip install. A tag push counts as main: a vYY.MM.DD
tag is cut from main, so that image is a main-channel artifact wearing an
immutable name.
No channel switcher, deliberately. background.js:34 already records that
Firefox's static update_url cannot apply, because every FC instance is a
different host — so the extension asks its configured backend, and the
channel IS the instance it points at. Switching is repointing apiUrl and
reinstalling from that host. A separate setting would contradict each
server build shipping its own extension.
This commit touches packaged extension files, so it moves the derived
version and will sign a new one via AMO — the first push to exercise the
extension-changed path from dev end to end.
The step the milestone exists for. sign-extension ungates from main-only
to main-or-dev, and build-web downloads the XPI on dev as well, so a dev
push produces an image carrying the extension that is being developed
rather than requiring a merge to try one.
Not two signatures. The version is the commit TIME of the newest packaged
extension change, so dev and main derive the SAME number for the same
source. A dev push that changes the extension signs it; the merge to main
finds the ext-<version> release already there, hits the cache, and bundles
the byte-identical XPI into :latest with no second AMO call. One signature
per extension CHANGE, shared by both channels. That property is what makes
two channels affordable at all, and it is why step 4 had to land first:
ungating this while the version was still the hand-set 1.0.11 would have
found the existing ext-1.0.11 release, skipped AMO, and bundled main's
stale XPI into :dev — a dev channel confidently serving old code.
Tags stay excluded. The tag path deliberately skips signing and polls for
the release instead (the 2026-05-27 race).
The ext-<version> release's target_commitish moves from the literal "main"
to $GITHUB_SHA. Either branch can create that release now, and tagging a
dev-signed XPI against a main commit that need not even contain the source
it was built from is a lie that costs nothing to avoid.
Known, not addressed here: two concurrent builds that both derive the same
unsigned version will both call AMO and the loser gets a 409. The window
already existed between main and tag pushes; dev signing widens it. It
fails loudly rather than shipping anything wrong, and the rollback trap
cleans up the empty release. Filed separately.
Also unchanged here: ci.yml's manual-bump guard is still in place and
still false. It does not fire on this commit — nothing packaged changed —
but it will fail the lane on the next extension change, demanding a bump
that no longer decides anything. Step 5 next.
Cutover. sign-extension no longer reads the version out of the repo — it
runs packaging.sh version and stamps the result into manifest.json and
package.json in the working tree before web-ext sees them. Never
committed back: the commit carrying the bump would itself be a change to
the extension and would move the version again.
Shadow mode ends here, in both build.yml and ci.yml. It had one job —
validate the formula at zero cost before a real AMO version was burned —
and CI confirmed it on 239b1ed: shadow: manual=1.0.11 derived=1.0.3499884.
build-web re-derives rather than being handed the value, so it gains
fetch-depth: 0. It was the outstanding landmine: a depth-1 clone derives a
WRONG, too-low version rather than failing, and would then 404 fetching a
release that exists under its real name. sign-extension and
extension-version already had full history.
New guard, and it stays permanently: refuse to sign when the derived
version is strictly OLDER than the highest ext-* release already signed.
Firefox rejects a downgrade and AMO never releases a burned version, so
backwards is unrecoverable — it strands every install that took the higher
one. Strictly older, not older-or-equal: equality is the ordinary case,
an unchanged extension deriving the same version it did last build, which
is exactly what makes the ext-<version> cache hit and holds AMO to one
call per extension CHANGE rather than per push. The release list is
paginated because ext-* shares it with the v* tags, and the bound fails
rather than calling the highest it happened to see the highest there is.
First derived value is 1.0.3499884 against a highest-signed ext-1.0.10, so
the backfill direction is right by six orders of magnitude. 1.0.11 sits in
the repo and was never signed; nothing is stranded by skipping past it.
Still main-only. Step 6 ungates sign-extension to dev, which is what
actually puts an XPI on :dev.
Note for step 5: ci.yml's manual-bump guard is now false. It still demands
a hand bump when a packaged file changes, and that bump no longer decides
anything — the derived value overwrites it at build time. Harmless but
pointless, and it should be retired before the next extension change.
build.yml triggered on main and tags only. The 2026-05-26 comment gave
the reason: "operator tests from :latest after merge-to-main, not from
the dev branch image. Saves one full docker build per dev push."
That trade has since been named as a fault. Family rule 147 — main IS
production, test on :dev, never by shipping — and rule 146 — a rolling
channel refreshes itself, and a channel that can only be refreshed by
shipping is not a channel. 146's note on 147 describes this exact shape:
the pressure to test by shipping does not come from carelessness, it
comes from :dev being unable to carry the build.
Two live consequences, not hypotheticals:
- docker-compose.yml pins fabledcurator:dev, an image nothing has
published since May. The registry-image path of the documented
quick-start could not have worked.
- trying an extension change required merging to main, because
sign-extension is gated to main and :dev did not exist to carry an
XPI. Shipping was the only way to test.
All three images build on dev. Deliberate: a :dev web image paired with
a stale :dev ml or agent is a worse trap than no dev channel, because
the mismatch surfaces as a runtime failure rather than a missing tag.
The cost the 2026-05-26 note was avoiding is real and is now paid on
every dev push — layer reuse should keep ml's cost to the COPY layers,
but if it bites, narrowing is a `paths:` filter away.
:dev only. The dev path never writes :c-<sha>: that is the rollback unit
(rule 145), and a rolling tag may legitimately carry newer contents than
the :c-<sha> of the same commit.
This does NOT yet put an XPI on :dev — sign-extension is still gated to
main, and ungating it has to wait for the derived version to control
publishing, or dev would sign the hand-set 1.0.11, hit the existing
cache and ship main's stale XPI. That is the next step.
Milestone #271 steps 2 and 3. Neither changes what gets published.
STEP 2 -- shadow mode.
build.yml's sign-extension and ci.yml's extension-version guard now log the
version that WOULD be derived from git history alongside the hand-maintained
one. Nothing reads the derived value, and neither site can fail because of it.
This exists because `web-ext sign` is one-shot per version: AMO 409s on a
repeat, so a wrong formula burns a real version number that cannot be
reclaimed. Comparing the two across real builds is the only way to validate it
at zero cost. sign-extension runs on main only, so main pushes are the sole
source of truth for whether the derived number moves exactly when the shipped
extension changes -- the dev-side log is a convenience, not the evidence.
sign-extension now checks out with fetch-depth: 0. The derived version is a
commit count and a depth-1 clone cannot produce one.
STEP 3 -- XPI content verification.
Every other packaging assertion checks our declaration against itself. This is
the first that asks web-ext what it ACTUALLY wrote into the archive.
That assumption was both unverified and fragile: `test/**` only survives to
web-ext because callers `set -f` before substituting it, so losing that
quoting would silently start shipping dev files with no other signal. The step
builds the XPI and asserts test/, scripts/, vitest.config.js, package.json,
package-lock.json, README.md and node_modules are absent -- and, because an
over-matching exclusion would break the extension at runtime rather than at
build time, that manifest.json, all four lib/*.js and every UI directory are
present.
unzip is installed only when missing; node:24-bookworm-slim may not carry it.
Refs #2399, #2400
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Build + push fabledcurator-agent alongside web/ml (own CUDA + onnxruntime-gpu
image, context=agent/, same tag cadence: main → :main/:latest/:c-<sha>, tag →
:<version>). So the operator PULLS + runs it on the GPU machine instead of
building locally. README switched to docker pull.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Ttrj5P7upUTueSfoJcxEqa
`${GITHUB_SHA:0:7}` substring expansion is bash-only; the runner
executes the step via dash/BusyBox sh and errored with
`Bad substitution` (act_runner workflow shell, observed on the
65386f0 main-push run). Switched to
`SHORT_SHA=$(printf '%s' "$GITHUB_SHA" | cut -c1-7)` which works in
both shells. Both build-web and build-ml tag-determination steps
updated.
Adds an immutable per-commit docker tag to every main-push build:
`git.fabledsword.com/bvandeusen/fabledcurator{,-ml}:c-<short_sha>`,
alongside the existing floating `:main` + `:latest`. Implements the
new family release-posture rule "Tags are milestones, not gates —
commit-SHA images are the rollback unit" so rollback to any commit
on main is `docker pull …:c-<sha>` with no release ceremony required.
Behavior change summary:
- main-push: was {:main, :latest} → now {:main, :latest, :c-<short_sha>}
- tag-push (opt-in vYY.MM.DD only, no .N): unchanged
- safety-net dev: unchanged
No code changes; the rule is about how the tag list is constructed.
Tag-push workflows stay as-is — vYY.MM.DD milestone cuts can still
fire them when the operator wants a labeled checkpoint.
Cutting a release fires BOTH the push-to-main workflow AND the push-to-tag
workflow in parallel. main-push runs sign-extension (AMO round-trip 1-5min)
then publishes the ext-<version> Forgejo release; tag-push skips
sign-extension (gated to main) and races straight to build-web's Download
XPI step. Tag-push lost every time — got 404 from
releases/tags/ext-<version> before main-push had finished signing.
v26.05.27.0 hit this: tag-push build-web died on exit 22 because the
ext-1.0.4 release wasn't published yet (it arrived ~4min later).
Fix: wrap the release lookup in a 20-iteration sleep+retry loop, 30s
between attempts (10min total upper bound, generous for AMO). main-push's
signing eventually publishes the release; tag-push picks it up on a later
poll. No more manual rerun of the failed job after every release cut.
Banked the trap as reference_tag_push_main_push_race.md — same shape will
recur any time a tag-push workflow consumes a main-push-produced artifact.
ci.yml: drop pull_request: trigger — push: branches: [dev, main] already covers it; pull_request was duplicating ci.yml runs on every dev push with an open PR. (No fork PRs in this repo.)
build.yml: drop dev from push triggers — operator doesn't use the :dev image. Add tags: ['v*'] trigger + tag-push branch in the Determine-tag logic so cutting a release tag publishes an immutable :v26.05.26.X image (rollback story) without re-publishing :latest. Extend the XPI-download step to fire on tag pushes too so the versioned image carries the signed extension.
Net per hotfix cycle: 5 runs → 3 (no tag) / 4 (with tag).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Generic python-ci runner is reusable across the family (FabledScribe,
FabledSteward, NhenArchiver, StashHandler, etc.) rather than scoped to
just this project. Runner image lives at CI-Runner/CI-python/ in the
operator's workspace; pattern mirrors CI-Runner/CI-go and CI-Runner/CI-flutter.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Pushes :dev on every dev push; pushes :main and :latest on main.
Uses RELEASE_TOKEN (a broader-scoped Forgejo PAT covering write:package,
read:package, write:release, write:issue) so the same secret can serve
future release-cutting and issue-management workflows.
README now documents the fabledcurator-ci runner label and the required
RELEASE_TOKEN scopes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
bvandeusen
Claude