The dropbox watch failed with "no matching releases" on some runs
(e.g. actions run 37236931512). It is not the network: Dropbox's download
redirect sends a share of requests to a newer build the pattern rejects
on purpose. On 2026-10-04, 96 of 100 HEADs ended at
dropbox-lnx.x86_64-272.4.3798 and 4 at 274.3.4801, which is not an x.4.y
stable build. The redirect provider made one probe, so one unlucky
answer failed the whole watch.
It now probes up to five times and keeps the first final URL that
matches, and curl gets --retry 2 as Fetcher.file already has. Live,
100 discovers against Dropbox all found 272.4.3798 in 103 probes. Two
tests cover a rollout answer before the stable one and every probe
missing.
Since publishing moved to CI on merge, a package whose PKGBUILD never
changes while its source moves was never rebuilt: omarchy-dev and
omarchy-settings-dev followed quattro through "#branch=" and a pkgver()
function, and nothing in this repository changed when quattro did. The
host timers that used to notice are off, so edge fell days behind.
The rule now: no git source without a commit or tag pin
(tests/pinned-sources.sh, run in CI). A package that has to follow a
branch declares a git_branch upstream watch, and the pin moves through
the same PR/build/publish path as every other version bump.
Watch (helpers/upstream-watch.py)
git_branch gains tag_pattern: the newest release tag in the pinned
commit's own history, exposed as {tag}/{version}/{distance}, so a
branch build is versioned <tag>.r<n>.g<sha>, above the release it
follows and below the next one. One blobless clone per branch per
run, shared by every package on it. min_release_age selects the
newest commit older than the window, so a push burst builds once.
Lane (helpers/package-metadata.sh, bin/sync-upstream --lane)
"auto_merge": true moves a package from the reviewed 6-hourly sync
PR to the unattended lane. Packages pinned from the same branch move
together: a failure on one restores the others and fails the group,
so the dev pair can never ship from two quattro commits.
Tracker (.github/workflows/track-branches.yml)
Every two hours: pin, open one PR with a GitHub App token, enable
auto-merge. Branch protection still gates the merge on result,
self-tests and build-isolation. A tip that fails to build stays an
open red PR until the next tick supersedes it. The App is required:
a PR opened with GITHUB_TOKEN has its checks held for approval and
its auto-merge would not fire publish.yml.
The reviewed workflows (sync-upstream, sync-rebuilds) open their PRs
with the same App so their builds start without a maintainer clicking
"Approve workflows to run"; without the App they fall back to
GITHUB_TOKEN and behave as before.
Recipes
The dev pair pins _commit and a real sha256sum, keeps the OMARCHY_SRC
override, and drops pkgver(). Its r-number stays the branch's total
commit count because the published history used it and pacman must
never see the version go down. omasnap-git is new: omacom/omasnap
main, versioned <tag>.r<distance>.g<sha>, provides/conflicts omasnap.
Emir Beganovic