Kigi-CLI/docs/RELEASE.md

Release checklist (PRD F8)

Kigi ships as a single-file binary for five targets, published on this repo's GitHub Releases (https://github.com/ELY-Open-Source/Kigi-CLI/releases) by .github/workflows/release.yml. Users install via install.sh / install.ps1 and stay current through the in-app self-updater (kigi-update), which resolves the same Releases API.

Cutting a release

1. Bump [workspace.package] version in Cargo.toml; land the change on main with green CI.

2. Regenerate the third-party notices (not enforced by CI — this is the step that keeps THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md fresh):

   cargo install cargo-about --locked   # once
   cargo about generate about.hbs -o THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md
   

   Commit the result if it changed.

3. Tag and push:

   git tag vX.Y.Z && git push origin vX.Y.Z
   

   The tag must equal the workspace version (vX.Y.Z ↔ X.Y.Z); the workflow fails fast on a mismatch.

4. The Release workflow builds all five targets with the hardened release-dist profile, packages kigi-<version>-<target-triple>.{tar.gz|zip} archives (binary + LICENSE + NOTICE + THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES), generates SHA256SUMS, and publishes the GitHub Release. Tags containing - (e.g. v0.2.0-alpha.1) publish as pre-releases, which only the alpha update channel picks up.

   The release is created as a draft and only flipped public once SHA256SUMS is attached, so releases/latest never hands the installer a release whose checksum manifest is still missing. A failed run leaves the draft in place; re-running the workflow reuses it rather than erroring on a duplicate tag_name.

5. Smoke-test an installed artifact:

   curl -fsSL https://kigicli.dev/install.sh | sh
   ~/.kigi/bin/kigi --version
   

Build runners

Every leg runs on a GitHub-hosted runner; none needs local state, so no self-hosted runner is involved. The repo is public, so keep it that way: a self-hosted runner must never be reachable from a pull_request event, and this workflow only triggers on tag pushes.

Runner	Builds
ubuntu-latest	x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
ubuntu-24.04-arm	aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu (native, no cross toolchain)
macos-latest	aarch64-apple-darwin, x86_64-apple-darwin
windows-latest	x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

macos-latest is Apple Silicon; x86_64-apple-darwin is a cross-compile against the same SDK. The Darwin targets need the real Apple linker (.cargo/config.toml passes -ObjC and -undefined dynamic_lookup), so they cannot move to a Linux runner.

windows-latest ships the VS Build Tools the static MSVC CRT link needs (ring, mimalloc, zstd-sys and libz-sys build with -C target-feature=+crt-static). Every job installs protoc (PROTOC_VERSION, matching the bin/protoc dotslash pin) and runs rustup show to materialise the rust-toolchain.toml pin; the arm64 Linux leg installs rustup first if the image lacks it.

The release steps use the preinstalled gh CLI with secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN (permissions: contents: write): gh release create --draft, then gh release upload per target, then SHA256SUMS and gh release edit --draft=false. Only the five checksum lines travel through actions/upload-artifact@v4; the archives go straight to the release.

Build caches come from Swatinem/rust-cache. GitHub only lets a tag run restore caches made on its own ref or the default branch, and nothing builds on main, so a tag build starts cold; the cache helps re-runs of the same tag.

Invariants to keep in lockstep

• Asset naming kigi-<version>-<target-triple>.{tar.gz|zip} and the SHA256SUMS manifest are consumed by three clients: install.sh, install.ps1, and auto_update::release_asset_name() in crates/codegen/kigi-update. Change one, change all (the kigi-update test test_release_asset_name_matches_release_workflow_naming pins the Rust side).
• Never publish two builds of the same semver version differing only in build metadata (+…) — the semver crate orders build metadata, so auto-update would bounce users between them.
• Rollbacks: deleting the bad release (or re-pointing "latest") is enough — the internal installer treats the Releases API as authoritative and downgrades clients on its own.
• No PyPI/npm packages, ever; in particular never squat the kimi-cli package name (PRD F8).