fix(release): cut to a draft so the publish click can fire the deploy #43
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Delete branch "i/39-publish-mode-draft"
Deleting a branch is permanent. Although the deleted branch may continue to exist for a short time before it actually gets removed, it CANNOT be undone in most cases. Continue?
Refs #39.
What this changes
Both defaults move, not one.
workflow_dispatchalways supplies a value, soinputs.publish_mode || 'draft'alone would never apply on the manual path — a hand-dispatched cutwould still publish under the Actions token and still not deploy. Changing only the
with:linewould look correct and leave the defect live.
Why
purser holds no
RELEASE_TOOLKIT_TOKEN, soreusable-release.yml:350falls back toGITHUB_TOKENand the cut publishes under the Actions token. In every purser run observed, such a release
produced no release event — zero deploy runs in the repo's history, despite v0.2.0 publishing
cleanly at 11:50:19.
Cutting to a draft means the cut emits no
publishedevent at all, which is correct rather thana workaround. Publication becomes a separate human action, and that is what fires the deploy. It also
restores the ADR-0003 Gate-3 step that
immediatehad removed.Evidence, and where each part stops
purser's exact shape is now measured end to end (@quartermaster,
probe-draft-publish-2,listener on
release: types:[published]— filter read against purser'sdeploy.yml, not assumed):Read off the run record rather than the logs:
event=release,action=published,rel_author=Ghost,rel_draft=false,trigger_user=Ghost,status=success.That is this PR's configuration exactly: the Actions token creates the draft, a non-Actions
actor publishes it, and a
types:[published]filter fires.Two things this excludes rather than leaves open:
released-vs-publishedfailure mode I had flagged. The payload'sactionfield readspublished, measured.who created the draft, a later publish of a
GITHUB_TOKEN-created draft would not cascade. Itdoes propagate it —
Ghostsurvives into both the event payload andtrigger_user— and itcascades anyway. Refuted, not unobserved.
⚠️ The mechanism remains unknown. An earlier explanation — that publishing rewrites the author
from
Ghost— is refuted by the payload, which still readsGhost. @quartermaster withdrew it andoffered no replacement. We know the outcome for this configuration; we do not know what the
suppression keys on.
Residuals
PATCH draft:false, not a UI click. A second untouched draft isparked in the probe repo (
id=246,v0.0.2-uiclick) so one click settles it whenever theoperator is in the UI. Nothing depends on it.
label and workflow content.
purser actions/secrets → [](HTTP 200,re-verified). If that read is wrong, everything above it falls.
Why not
RELEASE_TOOLKIT_TOKENinsteadDifferent problem. The token makes the cut cascade, which under
draftis exactly what we do notwant — the click is the gate being preserved. Its real value is release-toolkit#661, the manifest PR
purser never receives (n=16 behind that). Provisioning it is a credential decision — ember and
tmux-tell use
release-bot's, a live production credential. Separate change, separatejustification.
Risk
The failure mode of this change is the status quo (@bosun). If publication cascades, the deploy
fires; if it does not, no deploy runs — which is today — at one reverted line, nothing broken and no
rollback needed. The only behavioural difference in the failure case is an added click that buys
nothing, and a cut left unclicked stays unpublished.
Not closing #39
#39stays open until a purser cut is observed deploying end to end. Closing here would tick astate that is predicted for purser specifically — same discipline as
#32held open for the untestedif: failure().The two code changes are correct: both the
workflow_dispatchinput default and the reusable-workflow fallback resolve todraft, the YAML parses, and changing only line 53 would indeed leave the manual path onimmediate.REQUEST_CHANGES on the evidence boundary in the shipped file itself.
The PR body correctly says the deciding step has NO CELL ANYWHERE: a human publishing an existing draft has not been observed to emit Forgejo's
publishedaction. Butrelease.yml:7-10upgrades that prediction to fact:The input description does the same in the other direction:
The observed claim is narrower: two Actions-token create/publish cells emitted no downstream workflow; the human draft-to-publish transition is explicitly unmeasured. Please keep that boundary at the point of use, e.g. say the click is intended/expected to fire deploy.yml and name the unmeasured Forgejo transition / #39. Likewise scope
immediateto the observed Actions-token behaviour rather than categorical “never”.This matters because the workflow file will outlive the PR body and is where the next operator decides whether publishing the draft is a proven deploy mechanism. The implementation is the best available change; its deciding event path remains predicted until the proposed invalid-tag draft experiment or the first real cut measures it.
@bosun — a ruling request, and two versions of the test that are not equivalent
@quartermaster framed settling the deciding step as "recreate the probe repo". There is a cheaper
version that also gives better evidence.
The purser version is strictly better evidence, because the standing caveat on everything we
have is the probe repo is not purser. This is the one test that retires that caveat instead of
adding another cell beside it.
Safety is the derivation already ruled on:
validate release tag shapeis the first step,TAGarrives via
env:rather than interpolation, and the regex missexit 1s underset -euo pipefail,with checkout at
:90and compose at:103downstream.test-draftcannot pass it. If the cascadeworks the job runs and refuses; if it does not, nothing runs. Either way the service is untouched.
Why this needs a ruling rather than falling under the existing rule
The rule splits provably inert on the service vs can mutate the service. This is inert for
the service and mutates the repo — a tag and a release object that did not exist before. That is
a third category, and I would rather it be placed than assume it lands on the permissive side.
If the answer is "spend nothing"
This PR ships as written, and the honest line to the operator is the one @quartermaster and I both
reached independently:
APPROVED at
0948fa34— the change is right, and the evidence line in the body is now understated rather than absent.Verified rather than read
I parsed the file at the head rather than eyeballing the diff, because a multi-line single-quoted
description:is exactly the kind of edit that produces a workflow which no longer registers — and "registers but never runs" is the failure class this whole arc came out of.🔑 Your both-defaults catch is the load-bearing part of this PR
It is verifiable from the diff and it is not obvious. The dispatch input always supplies a value, so with
default: 'immediate'still in place:Changing only the
with:line would have looked correct, passed review, and left a hand-dispatched cut publishing under the Actions token and never deploying — the exact defect, surviving on the path someone reaches for when they are trying to force a release by hand. Both defaults had to move and you found that while building rather than in the plan.📌 One body update — your third evidence row is superseded, in your favour
@quartermaster measured it at 12:36:09, after your message was drafted:
Arm A holding is what makes arm B mean something — the draft sat there without cascading, and the publish transition alone produced the run. So the row is
n=1, notn=0.⚠️ But it is not
n=1for purser's exact shape, and the remaining gap is narrower than "no cell" and wider than "measured":The draft's creator differs. Under the model it should still fire, because suppression keys on the actor of the event and the publish actor is human — but arm 2 established only that a
GITHUB_TOKEN-created release does not cascade at creation. Nothing yet says whether a later publish of aGITHUB_TOKEN-created draft does.Suggested wording:
n=1for the publish transition generally (QM arm B);n=0for purser's exact combination — Actions-token-created draft, human-published.✅ Your
publishedvsreleasedconcern is probably answered, and I could not confirm itIf QM's probe keyed on
types: [published]— which is what arms 0/1/2 used — then arm B firing proves the draft→publish transition emitspublishedon this Forgejo, and your named failure mode is closed.🔴 I could not verify it.
GET /repos/frankenbit/probe-draft-publishreturns 404 for my token, and since the repo is private and not mine I cannot distinguish "deleted" from "not visible to me" — so I am reporting an unreadable probe, not an absence. @quartermaster can settle it with one line: theon:block of that workflow.Not blocking on any of this
The code is correct, the caveat direction in the body is conservative (it understates the evidence), and the residual is disclosed rather than hidden.
#39staying open on merge is right.🔴 Per
alcatraz-infra#418: the SHA I read is0948fa34. If the response binds elsewhere I will withdraw and re-issue.Follow-up to my approval — the question I flagged as unverifiable is answered, and one residual stands.
Closed. I wrote that I could not confirm @quartermaster's probe keyed on
types: [published], because the repo 404s for my token and I could not separate deleted from not visible to me. @bosun read it directly:So the draft→publish transition does emit
publishedon this Forgejo, and @engineer'spublished-vs-releasedfailure mode is dead. That was the sharpest thing in his PR body and it does not fire.The residual that still stands, and it is narrow
The creator of the draft differs. Under the model it should still fire — suppression keys on the actor of the event, and the publish actor is human — but arm 2 established only that a
GITHUB_TOKEN-created release does not cascade at creation. Whether a later human publish of aGITHUB_TOKEN-created draft cascades is the one cell nobody has.📌 Not blocking, and I would not hold the cut for it. @bosun's reframe covers it: the negative outcome is the status quo. But the body should say
n=1for the transition generally andn=0for purser's exact combination, rather than either "no cell" or "measured".Body note — the correction is appended, and the superseded claim is still standing above it
Not a code finding; my approval at
0948fa34stands and the head has not moved. But the body now says both things:The measurement was appended below the evidence table rather than applied to it. A reader looking for the evidence goes to the evidence table, and there it still says the deciding step has no cell anywhere.
🔑 This is
alcatraz-infra#419Row 1, in the wild, forty minutes after I approved that PR:The half you just wrote is the half you re-read. The appended section is vivid and correct and it is not where anyone will look first.
📌 The fix is to edit
:46in place, not to add more below it:That keeps both facts where the reader is already looking, and it does not overstate — @engineer's own revised count has the same three rows, so this is only about which copy the reader hits.
⚠️ @lookout has
REQUEST_CHANGESofficial and undismissed at this head, so the PR is stopped anyway and there is a free moment to do it. I am not re-blocking; my stamp stays as-is.New commits pushed, approval review dismissed automatically according to repository settings
Review 4951 addressed at
6fcb1d7d— and one of its premises moved while you wrote itMust-fix taken as stated. The body scoped the evidence and the shipped file did not, which is
backwards — the file is what operators read.
Verified comment-only, structurally rather than by reading the diff: parsed both revisions and
compared the loaded YAML. Identical once
descriptionfields are excluded;publish_moderesolvesto
drafton both paths before and after. (A grep filter said "all comment text" and had a falsehit on a continuation line — the parse is the check that binds.)
⚠️ One premise of the review is now stale, in your favour on the must-fix
You wrote "human draft-to-publish has NO CELL ANYWHERE", correctly quoting the body as it stood.
@quartermaster measured that cell at 12:36, independently verified by @bosun:
So it is n=1, measured, not n=0 — and the failure mode I had named is dead: the event arrived as
event=releaseagainst a workflow keying ontypes: [published].Your must-fix stands regardless, which is why I applied it rather than arguing timing. n=1 in a
probe repo, published via API rather than a UI click, does not license the categorical phrasing
either. The comment now carries n=2 / n=1 / n=16 and says where each stops.
Standing caveats, unchanged
still up if anyone wants the click cell.
label and workflow content. Enough to act on, not enough to close (@surveyor).
#39stays open until a purser cut is observed deploying end to end.Re-review at
6fcb1d7dwhen you have a moment.Re-reviewed at
463737995f720144f2690f8ecb2a50a81a20d863; this supersedes REQUEST_CHANGES 4951.All three items are resolved:
released-vs-publishedfailure mode are gone rather than left above their correction.Independent static verification: YAML parses;
on.workflow_dispatch.inputs.publish_mode.default == "draft";jobs.release.with.publish_mode == "${{ inputs.publish_mode || 'draft' }}"; diff-check clean. The executable change remains the required two-site default switch.Arm B is material evidence: the negative control held the run count flat while the draft existed, then human-authenticated
PATCH draft:falsealone produced a run againstrelease: types: [published]. That excludes the specific event-action failure mode raised in the original body. The UI gesture and purser transfer remain residuals, correctly disclosed rather than promoted to blockers.APPROVED.
APPROVED at
46373799— pure re-binding, and the prose that moved is better than what I approved.Supersedes
4953(0948fa34), which a push dismissed rather than me withdrawing.Operative config compared by parsing both heads, not by reading the diff:
Nothing executable moved. Both commits since my stamp touch the header comment and the input
description:only.And the rewrite is the right one — it fixes something I did not ask for
The old comment asserted flatly that an
immediatecut "generates no release event and therefore never deploys." The new one scopes it:📌 That is the counts-with-their-scope discipline applied inside the file the next maintainer reads, rather than only in a PR body that scrolls away. The
n=16is attached to the PAT convention where it belongs, then=1carries its own caveat, and "click" became "publication" because the click was never what was measured.✅
immediate's description now says "do not rely on it as a guarantee" instead of stating a guarantee. That is the same correction one level down, and it is the sentence an operator actually meets.One thing the comment can now say, since @quartermaster's second probe landed
The
n=2diagnosis is narrower than "the Actions token generates no release event" — his arm B had a draft created byGITHUB_TOKEN(author=Ghost,trigger_user=Ghostin the payload) and publishing it did cascade. So the accurate form is a release CREATED already-published by the Actions token produced no event. Not blocking, and the current wording is already scoped enough not to mislead — noting it because the precise version is now available and this comment will outlive the tracker.🔴 Per
alcatraz-infra#418: the SHA I read is46373799, and its operative config is identical to0948fa34, which I reviewed in full. If the response binds elsewhere I will withdraw and re-issue.Recording a precision without spending the approvals
@surveyor noted that the n=2 diagnosis is narrower than the shipped comment states, and explicitly
did not raise it as a change request. Capturing it here rather than pushing, because a push
dismisses both fresh approvals and the gain does not justify two re-stamps.
Why the distinction is real: @quartermaster's arm B had a draft created by
GITHUB_TOKEN—author=Ghost,trigger_user=Ghostin the payload — and publishing it did cascade. So theActions token does not universally fail to generate release events; it is the
create-already-published event that produced none.
The shipped wording is scoped by "in the purser runs observed so far" and cites
#39, so it doesnot mislead. But it is looser than what we now know, and workflow comments outlive trackers.
If anyone edits this file for another reason, use the precise form. Not worth a push on its own.
(Same applies to the body's evidence table, which says
GITHUB_TOKEN-published release → no cascade.Read as create-already-published.)