GitHub's "Latest release" is the newest game release, so new players download the game's archive, which
does not start on its own (#1647). Making a launcher release the latest instead would break every
installed horizon-server, install.sh and install.ps1: they ask for releases/latest and expect the game's
archives, and a server that can't update can't fetch a fix either. So the game stays the latest and says
where to go:
- The notes open with "Want to play? Download the Horizon launcher, not the files below", linking
playhorizon.dev and the launcher releases. It is raw HTML on one line, which GitHub renders and the
launcher's notes view and one-line summary skip (pulldown-cmark HTML events), so launchers already
installed don't tell players to download themselves. The game footer that said the same at the bottom
goes. The site's Releases page leaves the block out.
- release.yml gives each archive a label ("Game files the launcher installs: Linux (...)", "Dedicated
server for Linux (...)"), which GitHub shows instead of the file name. Everything that downloads
matches the asset's name, which is unchanged.
Fixes#1647
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
One release per merge made about 40 releases in 31 hours, hard for players to follow (asked on Discord).
release-now still releases at once.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Ludovic's decision (2026-10-23): no more Alpha and Stable. release.yml
publishes every game release as the release and GitHub's latest instead of
a pre-release that promote.yml made stable once a day. The checks that
gated a promotion run in the release itself: `decide` holds the train while
an issue labelled release-blocker is open (forced runs too), and the publish
job runs `release_train.py gate` right before publishing: the Mac mini's
smoke-test.json must be there and show a world was drawn, and no blocker may
be open. Otherwise nothing is published.
Notes cover everything since the last release that is not a pre-release, so
the first single-channel release lists all of it since v0.2.0. promote.yml,
tools/release_channels.py and its tests are deleted. The cadence is
unchanged (5 minutes of settling, 20 at most, release-now at once).
Docs and site: one channel in release-flow, versioning, security, the FAQ,
install, the home page and the Releases page (Game / Launcher filter); no
player-facing Alpha wording left.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The whole of Horizon is in beta, so the channel that installs every build as
soon as it is built is called Alpha; Stable keeps its name. The launcher's
Settings, the update-channel command, the MCP tool, the release notes footer
and the docs say Alpha. update_channel is saved as "alpha"; "nightly" and the
old beta_builds switch still read as Alpha.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The daily promotion moves to 20:00 UTC (21:00 in Paris in winter time):
PROMOTE_AT and promote.yml's cron (20:07, retries until 21:37), with the docs
that give the time. A launcher left open on Nightly looks for new releases
every 30 minutes; Stable keeps 4 hours. The launcher README's Settings
screenshot shows the Updates choice.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The launcher's "Beta builds" switch becomes an Updates choice of two channels,
stored as "update_channel": "stable" | "nightly" (an old "beta_builds": true
reads as nightly). The CLI (update-channel) and MCP (update_channel) show and
set it, and list each release's channel as stable or nightly.
Nightly ships constantly: the release train waits 5 minutes for a merge wave to
settle (20 at most) instead of 15 (an hour). Stable moves once a day:
promote.yml runs at 19:00 UTC (retries until 20:37) and promotes the newest beta
that had been out 6 hours by 19:00, so late runs and retries pick the same one.
The stalled-promotion issue waits 30 hours. Release notes, docs, the website's
install and FAQ pages say Stable and Nightly.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
docs/versioning.md: with .github/release-line.txt (MAJOR.MINOR) the train tags game releases
vMAJOR.MINOR.PATCH and launcher releases launcher@MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, the patch after the newest
release on the line; the line's first release goes out at once (still not while RELEASES_PAUSED is
set). Without the file nothing changes: vYYYY.MM.DD[.N] and launcher-vX.Y.Z. The file is not added
here; the switch to 0.2 is a separate one-line pull request for the day Ludovic says go.
- tag_key: every 0.2 tag ranks above every dated or launcher-v tag; semver order within, a
pre-release before its release. release_channels.py uses the same key and tag test, so promotion
and "latest only moves forward" work across the switch.
- A line's first release says so in its notes; 0.2.0's explains the numbering and how a server
that says it is up to date takes it (horizon-server update --version v0.2.0).
- launcher.yml strips either prefix for HORIZON_LAUNCHER_VERSION and passes HORIZON_LAUNCHER_TAG,
which the launcher uses to know its own line.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- crates/horizon-release-sign/legacy-releases.txt pins the SHA-256 of every archive of the 131 releases published
before signing (GitHub's upload digests, written by tools/ci/legacy_releases.py). The launcher and
horizon-server update install those releases only with exactly those files, so rolling back to one works and
nobody can swap its files later; every other release needs its signed SHA256SUMS.
- the_launcher_ships_with_a_release_key and horizon_server_ships_with_a_release_key fail while
release-keys.txt lists no key, so this can't ship refusing everything.
- Test tags moved to v2099.* so they never collide with a pinned release.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- A release-blocker issue's text is never read: its author can edit it after a maintainer labels it, so an
open blocker holds every beta, and one closed as completed still holds the betas published before it closed.
- Even --force never promotes a beta that isn't newer than the stable release: horizon-server update and
install.sh download GitHub's latest.
- When the oldest beta newer than the stable release has waited 24 hours, promote.yml opens a "Promotion to
stable has stalled" issue with the last reason; the next promotion closes it.
- promote.yml: persist-credentials: false; issues: write for the stall issue.
- Website: the newest 100 releases, plus GitHub's latest (the stable one) when a day of betas pushes it out.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Game releases go out as betas (GitHub pre-releases, never "latest") with the Mac mini's smoke
report attached. promote.yml (every 30 minutes, or by hand from a phone) runs
tools/release_channels.py, which makes the newest beta stable and latest once it has been out 6
hours, passed its smoke test and no release-blocker issue covers it, with notes rewritten to cover
everything since the last stable release. release_train.py counts merges from the newest release of
either channel, and a beta's notes say it is one.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
🤖 Agent: merged after verify passed, with security-1's dry runs on the branch and an independent review (no regression: parity still runs on every PR from this repo; releases go out unsigned with a warning until the signing key is set).
Any repository code running earlier in the job that holds the key could reach it (a build patched
through Cargo.toml, or a step writing $GITHUB_ENV or $GITHUB_PATH for the next one). The `sign`
job checks out only tools/ci/sign_release.sh, which signs with the runner's OpenSSL; the publish
job, without the key, checks the result with horizon-release-sign as launchers will.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
crates/horizon-release-sign signs a release's checksums with an Ed25519 key that exists only as a
secret of the `release` environment, and checks them as launchers will, against the public keys
built in from release-keys.txt. Dry runs sign with a throwaway key. Until release-keys.txt lists a
key, releases keep going out with SHA256SUMS alone and a warning; once it does, a missing or
unknown key fails the release before anything is published. tools/ci/new_release_key.sh pipes a
new key straight into the secret and prints only the public key. ring and base64 are already in
the lockfile.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Labels started `checks` runs whose verify job was skipped, and GitHub counts a skipped required
check as passed: auto-merge merged #823 and #837 before the real verify finished. Labels no longer
start `checks` (the fork-only run-parity label has its own workflow), and verify has no condition.
The parity job moves into a reusable workflow both call.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
horizon-client's cpal output and its controllers (gilrs, the DualSense's HID output) move behind the
audio and controllers features, on by default, so the game is unchanged. Built with
--no-default-features it links neither libasound.so.2 nor libudev.so.1. release.yml packages that
build as horizon-engine in horizon-server-linux-x86_64.tar.gz (xtask package-server, checked by
check_imports.py --server); install.sh installs it on Linux (and --archive installs a local one);
horizon-server already prefers horizon-engine. The Dockerfile uses it too, and CI lints it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
GitHub's releases page sorts a day's tags as text, so v2026.10.15.9 showed
above v2026.10.15.18 (reported by rdbt on Discord). Tags now count .01, .02...
Every reader (release_train.tag_key, the launcher's compare_versions) compares
the parts as integers, so older unpadded tags still order correctly.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Releases now ship as often as changes land, so nothing they leave behind may
grow without bound. Workflow uploads keep 3 days (nightly parity logs 7); the
releases carry their own assets.
tools/ci/runner-gc.sh, run every 6 hours by launchd on the Mac mini from a copy
of main, skips a runner in a job, removes a checkout's cargo build folders past
12 GB and harness work folders under .local/ untouched for 3 days, and keeps the
2 newest shared preparations while no runner works. The runners build through
the machine's sccache, so what it removes comes back from the cache.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Ludovic wants releases as often as changes land. A kind now releases when
player-facing pull requests merged since its last release and the newest of
them merged 15 minutes ago (a burst of merges becomes one release), or the
oldest an hour ago when merges never pause; release-now still ships at once.
There is no minimum time between releases. The scheduled checks run every 10
minutes (game at :02, launcher at :07) so a settled release goes out without
another merge.
Release titles keep proper nouns (Horizon's mark, Microsoft, LAN, ...) when
they lowercase the clauses after the first.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
nightly.yml runs every harness from scratch on main at 03:00 Paris time on the Mac mini's runner, after
preparing the resources again if the preparer changed. tools/ci/parity_issues.py compares the results with
the previous audit: a harness that passed and now fails gets one issue labelled parity-regression (an open
one is commented on), and an issue closes when its harness passes again. The bugs session picks them up.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
launcher.yml releases the launcher by itself: after a push to main that changes launcher/,
crates/horizon-prepare or crates/horizon-theme, hourly, and by hand, with the game's rules
(tools/release_train.py decide --kind launcher: player-facing pull requests and a 3-hour cooldown,
release-now, skip-release, RELEASES_PAUSED). launcher-vX.Y.Z is the next patch, or the next minor after a
pull request labelled feature. Linux on ubuntu-22.04, Windows on GitHub, macOS on the Mac mini's runner;
published with --latest=false.
No version-bump commits: VERSION reads HORIZON_LAUNCHER_VERSION with option_env!, falling back to
Cargo.toml's, and --version, the User-Agent and the self-update comparison use it; each build checks
--version says the release's version.
With several game releases a day, the newest launcher release soon falls out of the newest 100 (launcher)
or 30 (website) releases: both now look the newest launcher-v tags up one by one when the list has none.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Checked on the Mac mini: 1500 offscreen frames in 12 s, 81 chunks generated, 4153 sections meshed, a player.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
release.yml now releases the game by itself: after every green checks run of a push to main, every hour
(a release the cooldown held goes out without another merge) and by hand. tools/release_train.py decides
from the pull requests merged since the last published game release: a release when one changed what
players run and the last release is 3 hours old, at once for a pull request labelled release-now;
skip-release pull requests don't count. RELEASES_PAUSED=1 stops it. Tags vYYYY.MM.DD, then .1, .2 the
same UTC day.
Linux (ubuntu-22.04) and Windows build on GitHub with Cargo caches, macOS on the Mac mini's runner
(MAC_RUNNER=macos-latest sends it to GitHub). Each builds horizon-client, horizon-ctl and horizon-prepare
(all three named: --bin selects only the named binaries), checks all three exist, checks their libraries,
starts each one, packages with xtask and archives; the Mac also runs the game offscreen for 300 frames on
a new world with resources prepared from its own Minecraft. The notes: New (label feature), Fixed (the
rest), Known issues (docs/known-issues.md). A hand-started run off main, or with dry_run, builds
everything and writes the notes but publishes nothing.
docs/release-flow.md describes the flow, the labels, pausing and rolling back; the launcher gets a test
that a release turned back into a draft is never offered.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Vanilla's resource packs refuse symbolic links inside a pack: with linked sounds the vanilla sound oracles found
no sound files while Rust did (sound_event, sound_engine on #133's parity run).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The first audit on the Mac mini failed 7 audio harnesses (no sounds in the prepared resources: the Mac mini has
no official launcher for horizon-prepare sounds to copy from) and save_roundtrip (it needs vscreen). The
sounds depend only on the Minecraft version: kept once in shared-local/sounds/<version>/ and linked into each
preparation.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A second runner (ludovics-mac-mini-2, same labels) shares the first one's vanilla data through a link, so
vanilla-data.sh prepares under a lock; a 30-minute audit no longer holds a release's macOS build back.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
verify keeps its dependencies and workspace build in a cache saved by main's runs (Swatinem/rust-cache).
The new parity job runs on the Mac mini's self-hosted runner (label horizon-game), which holds the
maintainer's own Minecraft files: tools/ci/vanilla-data.sh links .local/ to the runner's copy and prepares
the resources with the pull request's own horizon-prepare, once per preparer version; then
tools/parity.py --changed <base> runs only the harnesses whose traced dependencies changed since the merge
base and that have no pass for their current inputs. A fork's pull request runs it only when a maintainer
adds run-parity, once per label, on the commit it had then.
parity.py: --changed REF, and linux_only in tools/parity_hosts.json for harnesses that differ on other
platforms for a reason that is not a Horizon bug (skipped there with the reason, unless named).
docs/release-flow.md starts with the pull request checks and merging.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Ludovic Marie