Review found that `apps/desktop/README.md#release-versions` and the
2026-09-16 version-derivation note already specify this convention, and
that three of their requirements were reversed without saying so. The
rules themselves are right; what was wrong was leaving them undocumented
and rejecting one of the forms they prescribe.
A stable base takes `-test.YYYYMMDD.index`, which validation refused
because such a version ranks below its base. That ordering is the point:
the form belongs to a test feed that never serves the production
release. Both READMEs, the older note, and a new note now record which
requirements this change reverses and why.
Three defects the review found, each reproducible:
- `afterPack` compared the bundled runtime against the product version,
which broke installed-update qualification: that flow passes a runtime
whose version was deliberately rewritten. The expected version is now
a parameter the preparer supplies, and `verifyDesktopRuntime` says
"bundled X is not the expected Y" rather than naming Electron.
- Upload could only learn the published version from a shell variable,
conflicting with "release fields come only from the target file". It
reads the completion record packaging wrote, and a mismatch now prints
the version that record holds.
- Automatic numbering read one listing page and one fixed directory. It
now follows every page, discards a listing it could not finish rather
than reusing an index that would overwrite a published installer,
bounds the request through the client's own timeout, and reads the
directory an unsigned build actually writes.
Also: `npm run` and `yarn run` set `npm_execpath` too, so the pnpm
resolution checks the path names pnpm; the argument separator can arrive
after a run script's preset arguments, not only first; and the toolchain
probe, parser, build commit, and tarball readers now have specs.
The concrete-terms gate forbids "provenance": the repository asks for the
exact source, field, or identity a value holds. The module records one
commit and whether its tree was dirty, so it and its callers say that.
The toolchain step also has to stay out of the way of the packaging
entry's error-recording test, which fakes the host platform and would
otherwise report the absent Windows compilers rather than the failure it
exercises. The test mocks the probe, as it already does for the release
environment and the signing keychain, and expects the new stage.
Injecting a build version renamed the Electron shell but not the dsh
runtime packed into it, and afterPack required the two to be equal, so
every build carrying a build version failed after packaging finished.
The bundled runtime is the dsh package at the product version, which is
what the check now compares against; the app already reports the shell
version and the bundled runtime version separately to the update policy.
Rename the flag to --build-version. The repository already has
DOWNLOAD_TEST_RELEASE_ID for the opaque test feed directory, so calling
a version a release id invited a reader to confuse the two. Accept a
forwarded `--` as well, because `pnpm run <script> -- --build-version x`
passes the separator through as an argument and every following option
would otherwise parse as a second target.
Packaging a build for a test feed or a colleague required bumping the
version in 295 manifests plus the lockfile first, because the version a
build publishes was only ever read from the checkout. Those edits cannot
be committed, so every such build left the working tree dirty, and the
`<version>.<date>.<sequence>` convention behind them lived only in the
operator's memory.
The version a build publishes is now an input. `--release-id` names it,
`--release-id auto` numbers it after the builds already published to the
destination bucket (falling back to local artifacts, since a fresh CI
checkout has none), and it reaches electron-builder through
extraMetadata, the update feed, and the upload validation as one value.
The manifests keep the product version, aligned with the dsh npm
package, and a release still publishes exactly that.
Validation goes through `semver` itself, because `electron-updater`
compares feed versions with `semver.gt` against the installed
`app.getVersion()`: a build version must outrank the product version it
extends, which holds for `0.1.6-alpha.2.20260921.1` over
`0.1.6-alpha.2` and cannot hold on a stable version, where a fourth
release number is not a version at all.
Two things a build could not previously answer for itself:
- Artifacts now carry the commit they were packaged from and whether
that checkout was dirty, so a build handed to a colleague is traceable
without a tag.
- A production upload tags that commit as `desktop-v<version>` once the
artifacts are public, and reports what to run by hand rather than
failing an upload that already completed. Test and local builds are
deliberately left untagged.
A toolchain step now probes tar and the Windows installer compiler
before the first build step, so a host that cannot finish the sequence
says so in seconds rather than minutes.
Load target-owned Windows and macOS release settings, validate them before
preparation, and provide a configuration-only check command. Share the local
settings with upload, installer tests, and manual macOS signature checks.
Exercise English and Chinese installer fixtures using visible UI labels and
cover registered installation paths with trailing separators.
winewill