Play does not show an empty "What's new" when the file is missing — it carries
the PREVIOUS release's text onto the new version. So the store listing ends up
describing a build nobody is getting, and nothing surfaces it except reading
the listing. That is the shape of the v0.22.3 notes announcing a feature the
tag never contained, and a soft warning in a log nobody reads does not prevent
it.
The gate runs FIRST in the job, before the ten-minute build: a miss costs a
second and leaves nothing half-published — no build, no assets on the Gitea
release, nothing on Play. It rejects three things: a missing file, a file
byte-identical to another release's (the same bug reached by copy-paste rather
than omission), and an empty or over-500-char one.
Length is checked here as well as in play-upload.py on purpose. The uploader
stays the last line of defence and is the only check android-promote.yml gets,
but it runs at step 9; this catches an unedited TEMPLATE copy at step 1. It
counts CHARACTERS, not bytes — Play's cap is 500 chars and `•` is three bytes
in UTF-8, so a `wc -c` check would have called the 356-char v0.23.0 notes 365
and can reject a legal file.
whatsnew/TEMPLATE.txt gives the file a starting point and says what the gate
does and does not enforce: it cannot tell whether the prose was ever edited, so
a copy that still reads "<The headline change>" ships exactly as written.
Canary stays exempt — no curated notes, and Play reusing text for internal
testers costs nothing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Production access came through on 2026-08-01. Until now a `vX.Y.Z` tag could
only reach `alpha` and someone had to promote it by hand in the Console; it now
goes to `production` at 100% (`completed`). Canary is unchanged on `internal`,
and its run-number versionCodes always outrank production, so testers keep
getting the newer build.
A tag therefore reaches real users with no further click. What keeps that
honest: the tag is only pushed once every platform is green, and Play reviews
each production release before it ships. Ramping instead is `--status
inProgress --user-fraction 0.2` on the upload step.
Play's "What's new" gets its own file, docs/releases/whatsnew/vX.Y.Z.txt — the
vX.Y.Z.md body is ~34 KB against a 500-char cap, so it cannot be reused. Only
tags have one; canary is a moving target and Play carrying the previous text
over is fine for internal testers. Same freeze rule as the notes: once the tag
exists, the file describes what that versionCode shipped.
android-promote.yml is the lever for everything that is not a fresh tag —
promote a tested build, halt a rollout, or roll production back onto an older
versionCode. It is separate from android.yml because promotion must not
rebuild, and an `if:` on all ten build steps is worse than one small workflow.
dry_run defaults to true, so a mis-typed versionCode validates and deletes the
edit instead of publishing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Release notes were written for the people who build Punktfunk, not the people who use it —
dense with protocol/ABI/type names that confused even technical readers. Rewrite v0.19.0 in a
benefit-first, plain-language voice (New/Improved/Fixed) with all internal terms removed from the
body and every protocol/ABI/embedder detail moved to a single bottom "Under the hood" section.
docs/releases/README.md now codifies this voice as the format spec for all future notes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Release notes now live in the repo at docs/releases/vX.Y.Z.md, authored during the
version bump (before the tag). ensure_release (gitea-release.sh + .ps1 twin) seeds the
Gitea release body from that file in the create POST, so the release is born WITH its
notes instead of being created empty and PATCHed afterward. canary/rc have no file ->
empty body, unchanged.
New manual `announce` workflow (workflow_dispatch, tag input) re-syncs the notes file
over the live release and posts a violet embed (title, notes lead-in, release-page link)
to the Discord #releases channel via the DISCORD_RELEASE_WEBHOOK secret. Stable-only:
a -rc tag is refused unless allow_prerelease=true. Pressing "go" is the quality gate, so
a half-built or failed release is never announced.
docs/releases/README.md documents the ritual; TEMPLATE.md is the skeleton.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
enricobuehlerandClaude Opus 5