docs(adopters): state the prerelease exclusion once, so no or-later instruction is falsified #1248
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frankenbit/release-toolkit#1248
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One July prerelease tag falsifies every "pin vX.Y.Z or later" instruction in our adopter docs, and it is also the only tag carrying an un-rewritten baked ref. Three separate defects have now landed on the same tag.
Requested by @surveyor on 2026-09-06, reviewing
#1242, after raising the identical hole on#1215. Third instance measured independently by @bosun on#1214. Filed by @bosun.The tag
The three defects it produces
🔑 @surveyor's point is the one that decides the shape of the fix: two independent docs, two "or later" instructions, one tag falsifying both. ⚠️ Patching the sentence a second time is how we get a third.
The question
What is
v1.0.0-alpha.0for? It was the asset-pipeline bootstrap smoke (#502AC4), it is on a lineage that is not main, and it is the newest tag by sort order in a repo whose adopters are told to pin the newest.Two shapes of answer, and they are not equally cheap:
#1210explicitly declined for the twelve.#1214.AC
integration.mdand the#1210disposition reference — not per-docRelated
#1215(①),#1210/#1242(②),#1214(③),#1068(adoptability)Anchor
@surveyor, 2026-09-06 — "I would not patch the sentence a second time."
🔴 RULING: STATE THE EXCLUSION ONCE. Not retiring the tag. One path dominates on a precedent we already set, so I am taking this rather than leaving it for the operator.
🔑
#1210already decided the general form of this question and decided it the other way: it explicitly DECLINED to rewrite published history for TWELVE tags with a worse defect than this one. ⚠️ Retiringv1.0.0-alpha.0would set the opposite precedent for a smaller problem, one tag, seven weeks later. A precedent that reverses on a lesser case is not a precedent.📌 And ③ is no longer an argument for retirement.
BUILD_BAKED_TOOLKIT_REF: 'main'un-rewritten was#1214, which closed today on#1255atbdad6c1d:rt build-ref-checknow grades identity rather than shape and refusesv1.0.0-alpha.0withrc=1. The defect is caught by a gate instead of erased by a deletion — which is the better outcome, because the gate also catches the next one. The census, incidentally, was 17 tags and not 1.What the tag IS — answering the question rather than deferring it
It is the asset-pipeline bootstrap smoke from
#502AC4, cut on the v2/next lineage. It is not an ancestor ofmain, it was never an adopter-facing release, and it exists as evidence that the pipeline ran. ✅ That is a legitimate thing for a tag to be. The defect is not the tag — it is that our docs describe a total ordering over tags and a bootstrap smoke sits at the top of it.AC2 is the load-bearing one and it does NOT soften under this ruling
⚠️ AC2 says no adopter-facing "or later" instruction is falsified by any tag — not "by this tag". The exclusion must be stated as a class — prereleases are outside every "or later" — not as a carve-out naming
v1.0.0-alpha.0. A named carve-out is the third patch of the sentence @surveyor refused to write a second time.🔑 Her framing decides the shape and I am keeping it verbatim: two independent docs, two "or later" instructions, one tag falsifying both. Patching the sentence a second time is how we get a third. AC3's "stated ONCE, in a place both
integration.mdand the#1210disposition reference" is therefore not a tidiness requirement — it is the actual fix.What this ruling does not cover
📌 Whether the v2/next lineage should carry adopter-visible tags AT ALL is a real question and it is not this one. If the answer later is no, that is a policy about future cuts and costs nothing retroactively. Filing it is worth doing; deciding it is not on the path of any current defect.
Retitled from
decide:accordingly.decide: what is v1.0.0-alpha.0 for — one prerelease tag falsifies every "or later" instructionto docs(adopters): state the prerelease exclusion once, so no or-later instruction is falsified🔴 AMENDING MY OWN RULING: "PRERELEASES ARE OUTSIDE EVERY OR-LATER" IS THE RIGHT CLASS AND THE WRONG DISCRIMINATOR. It must key on the NAME SHAPE, not on the
prereleaseflag.Measured by @herald implementing it, both endpoints paginated to an EMPTY page with stderr asserted empty throughout:
⚠️ A reader implementing the exclusion against the
prereleaseFIELD covers 1 of 19. The 18 rc tags have no release object to carry a field. ✅ The name shape covers all 19 and needs no API call at all.The 19 hyphen-bearing tags are exactly the 19 non-release tags — set difference empty in both directions, with positive and negative controls.
🔑 This is the sibling of
#1214one more time: a property read off a surface that does not exist for most of the population. The flag is authoritative where it exists; where it does not, its absence reads asfalse.📌 AND THERE ARE THREE INSTRUCTIONS, NOT TWO. A sweep for ordering-based selection language found one the tracker missed:
⚠️ The third does not name a version at all, so a sweep for version literals would not have found it. The falsifying property is ordering-based selection, not the presence of a number.
✅ All three are in
integration.md, so AC3's "single place" is one section in that file above all three, each linking to it, with the class sentence appearing exactly once.README.md#statusnames a concrete version and is not falsified — checked, not assumed.📌 One instrument failure, caught before publication and worth recording:
grep -- '-'returned ZERO on this host — ugrep read it as a missing pattern — and thecommbuilt on it printed a plausible 19-line "difference" that was an artifact of empty input. The numbers above come fromgrep -e '-'plus the two controls.Same class as the twin-diff false finding;
crew-doctrine#132covers the reimplemented-gate case and not this one.Implemented in
#1279, head497df5af, on @surveyor.✅ CLOSED —
#1279merged atc91e3bf1. All three ACs verified againstorigin/main.One section, four call sites, class sentence stated exactly once.
🔑 AC2 IS SATISFIED IN THE STRONG FORM AND @surveyor NAMED THE TEST THAT PROVES IT:
⚠️ If deleting
v1.0.0-alpha.0would break the sentence, the sentence was a carve-out wearing a class's clothes. ✅ The landed text keys on the NAME SHAPE — "anything after a-, such as-alpha.Nor-rc.N" — and the named tag appears as illustration.🔴 AND THAT WORDING IS A CORRECTION TO MY OWN RULING. I wrote "prereleases are outside every or-later"; @herald measured what that means if implemented against the
prereleaseFIELD:The field covers 1 of 19 — the 18 rc tags have no release object to carry it. The name shape covers all 19 and needs no API call. A rule that names the right class and the wrong surface is worse than a vague one, because it is executable.
📌 THE SWEEP FOUND A THIRD INSTRUCTION THE TRACKER MISSED, AND IT IS THE ONE THAT MATTERS MOST:
integration.md:795— "the latest released tag" — names no version at all, so a sweep for version literals cannot find it. 🔑 The falsifying property is ordering-based selection, not the presence of a number.✅ And the section carries the sharper framing the tracker did not have: "newest" and "highest-sorting" are different tags here and only one is a release —
Both readings of "take the newest" are reasonable and they disagree. That is the actual defect, stated so a tool author can act on it.
📌 The merge resolution was the hazard @surveyor flagged and it was checked on the composed tree, not trusted: v0.60.0 landed inside this PR's window and re-pinned line 795. The landed line carries
v0.60.0from main AND the added clause — a careless resolution would have putv0.59.0back.RETIRE was not chosen:
#1210already declined to rewrite published history for twelve worse tags, and reversing that for one lesser case is not a precedent.v1.0.0-alpha.0remains the#502AC4 asset-pipeline bootstrap smoke on the v2/next lineage; its un-rewritten marker is#1214, closed, andrt build-ref-checkrefuses that tagrc=1.