The clean checkout removes target/, and vanilla-data.sh builds horizon-prepare only when it
prepares afresh, so compile-exporters had no binary on a cached preparation. The bundle is
also compiled in the job instead of reused from .local/exporters, which vanilla-data.sh links
to preparations that pull requests' parity jobs write, and the job fails if anything but our
classes and the manifest would leave the runner.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
parity-main runs the vanilla harnesses on every push to main, one run at a
time: merges that land during a run wait in one pending run, which checks
every merge since main's last green parity-main (tools/parity_main.py base,
then parity.py --changed). A failure is bisected over the batch's
first-parent merges, running only the failing harnesses, and the breaking
merge's pull request gets a comment.
Game releases ship only a commit both checks and parity-main passed on
(release_train.py; release.yml also starts when parity-main finishes; a
forced release doesn't wait). The per-PR parity job now runs only for a PR
that changes a harness, an oracle, a probe or the runner, or carries
run-parity.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Compile and validate original exporter bundles during release builds, cache development compilation, and reuse initialized JVMs and collision data during preparation. Keep legacy preparers compatible while current releases need only a Java runtime.
Co-Authored-By: Codex <noreply@openai.com>
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>
horizon-mods' runtime is no longer a default feature, and its sandbox test
requires runtime and pack instead of a dev-dependency on itself (that
dev-dependency turned the runtime on in every workspace build with examples,
the parity probe build included). The client gets a mods feature that turns
the runtime on; without it game/mods.rs keeps content mods and logs why code
mods don't start, and every hook does nothing.
Release builds (client and server) pass the feature, CI's clippy and tests
pass it (and pack, for the sandbox test), and pr_ready does where horizon-mods
is checked. horizon_mods::find moves to manifest.rs: content mods use it
without the runtime.
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 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>
🤖 Agent: merged after integration wave 1 on the desktop (main e730dc14 + #1108#1114#1131#1157#1158#1162 = ae482a72): fmt, clippy -D warnings, workspace tests (one port-race flake in horizon-server panel, passes on rerun), release build, tools/parity.py --changed origin/main 299/302 then the 3 rerun: save_roundtrip pass, world_reopen pass x2 (one early-count flake), dedicated_server = known flake also failing on main (fixed by #1183/#1184).
release.yml builds every game release with HORIZON_VERSION, the tag without its v
(docs/versioning.md), as launcher.yml already does for the launcher: no version-bump commits.
- horizon_core::release::{RELEASE, VERSION}: the built-in version, or Cargo.toml's for a build from
source. (horizon_core::version stays Minecraft's, generated by gen_version_consts.py.)
- horizon-server and horizon-prepare --version, the server's /api/v1/status, horizon-ctl's MCP
serverInfo and the "Horizon/<version>" user agents use it; they all said 0.1.0.
- The client's crash reports and telemetry say v0.2.3 from the built-in version wherever the game
is installed; releases from before 0.2 (no version built in) still read the launcher's folder name.
- The launcher's benchmark telemetry used Cargo.toml's version instead of the release's.
- release.yml checks that horizon-prepare and horizon-server --version say the release's version.
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>
With the repository variable MACOS_SIGN_IDENTITY set, the launcher's Horizon.app and .dmg and the
game's three programs are signed with the hardened runtime and a timestamp, notarized and (app,
dmg) stapled, from a keychain of the Mac mini's own that keychain.sh unlocks with its password from
1Password. Unset, everything is signed ad hoc as before. The launcher checks an updated bundle's
signature before and after swapping it in, and puts the old one back when it doesn't hold.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
🤖 Agent: merged after verify passed, security-1's dry runs on the branch, and an independent review whose findings were all fixed. Every release goes out as a beta and is promoted to stable after 6 hours if its smoke test passed and no release-blocker issue is open; launcher-v0.14.0 (stable by default) is already out.
Its work folder is shared with pull requests' parity jobs; with clean: false, whatever they left (target/, an
untracked .cargo/config.toml, a build script's output) could end up in a release. release.yml and launcher.yml
now always check out clean; target/ is rebuilt from scratch, and vanilla-data.sh relinks .local/ from its
preparations outside the checkout.
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>
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>
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>
ditto without --norsrc --noextattr --noqtn stores an AppleDouble ._ entry
beside every file that has extended attributes, so the macOS release zip
held hundreds of them (horizon-macos-arm64/._horizon-ctl, tools/._*.py).
Package it as packaging/macos/package.sh already does, and fail the job if
any ._ or __MACOSX entry is left.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- packaging/server/install.sh (Linux, macOS) and install.ps1 (Windows) install the latest release (or
--version) from GitHub, check the SHA-256 GitHub publishes for it, and keep releases side by side:
<dir>/current points at the one in use, so an update or a rollback is one link, and the game files
prepared from the owner's Minecraft stay in <dir>/game-files across updates.
- packaging/server/Dockerfile builds the server and the engine; the prepared game files are mounted
read-only, and the first start writes server.toml from HORIZON_EULA, HORIZON_WORLD, HORIZON_SEED,
HORIZON_PORT, HORIZON_WHITELIST, HORIZON_PLAYERS and HORIZON_OP (`init` reads them too).
- `horizon-server service install|uninstall|print` writes and loads a systemd unit (user, or --system),
a launchd agent, or a Windows task at logon. It runs the installer's launcher, so updates apply on
the next restart.
- Releases build horizon-server and ship it beside horizon-ctl and horizon-prepare; PLAY.txt says how
to run a server.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The macOS release build has failed since 05:54 UTC on 2026-10-16: on the
self-hosted Mac mini runner the game drew its 1500 frames in about 2.5 s,
before the world had started generating (chunks 0, player null), so no
release has been published since v2026.10.16.03.
--world-frames N exits after N frames drawn with the player in the world.
It is otherwise a frame-limited run (classic menus, --timeout-seconds), and
--frames keeps its meaning for the harnesses.
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>
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>
With --bin flags, cargo builds only the named binaries of every selected
package, so -p horizon-prepare built nothing and the import checks failed on
target/release/horizon-prepare (every run since #92).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
`cargo run -p xtask -- package BINARY OUTDIR` does what package.sh did:
OUTDIR wiped and recreated, the `git archive HEAD tools
mods/horizon/src/test/java crates/horizon-prepare research-lock.json LICENSE`
tree extracted (the tar read in Rust, executables kept executable), the client,
horizon-ctl and horizon-prepare copied (.exe beside an .exe, the same error when
one is missing) and PLAY.txt. release.yml calls it; package.sh is gone.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Vanilla 26.3 has no gamepad input, so this is Horizon's own, on Bedrock's
default layout (docs/controllers.md). gilrs reads the pads; the pure part
(bindings, radial deadzones, the look curve, button edges, the
horizon-controller.txt settings file) is in gamepad.rs with unit tests.
Buttons act as the vanilla key mapping they're bound to, through the same
path a rebound keyboard key takes (the keyboard's post-rebinding handling
moves into Game::mapped_key). The left stick is an analog move vector,
the right stick turns the view per frame, LB/RB step the hotbar, B and
Start leave screens and A respawns. horizon-ctl pad injects a virtual pad.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The launcher prepares a version in-process when it ships the preparer sources
the launcher was built with, with the version's own horizon-prepare when they
differ, and with the Python script only for versions made before it. Release
folders ship horizon-prepare and its sources; resources are reused between
versions with the same preparer. The game's messages, PLAY.txt, the docs and
release builds name horizon-prepare, and tools/prepare_native_client.py is a
wrapper of it for the development tools.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
release.yml builds horizon-ctl beside the client (checked for system-only
imports like it), packaging/package.sh copies it from beside the client binary
and refuses to package without it (the macOS folders made by hand go through
the same script), and package_native_client.py adds it to private archives.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Windows launcher was built without crt-static and imported VCRUNTIME140.dll,
which only the Visual C++ redistributable installs: players without it got a
missing-DLL dialog before anything started. The game itself links only system
DLLs (vulkan-1.dll is loaded at run time).
- launcher.yml links the C runtime on Windows.
- tools/check_imports.py reads PE import and delay-import tables (and ELF
loader, needed libraries and run paths); release.yml and launcher.yml fail
when a Windows binary imports a non-system DLL.
- release.yml builds Linux on Ubuntu 22.04: the NixOS-made Linux release asked
for a /nix/store loader, so it ran nowhere but NixOS.
- No adapter: the game says the Vulkan driver is missing and what to install,
and on Windows keeps the console open until Enter.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The control socket reports itself unavailable on Windows, which has no
Unix domain sockets, and horizon-ctl uses the same stream type. A release
workflow builds the Windows client by hand; packaging/package.sh assembles
the binary, the resource preparation tool and PLAY.txt, without any of
Minecraft's files.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Ludovic Marie
rdbtCVS