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.