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.
Ryan Hughes