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>
Drop the Horizon menu style (options_horizon.rs, front.rs, the live title
backdrop and its post grade, the launcher's menu-style setting, CLI and MCP
tool). Every screen is vanilla's. Horizon's own settings hang off vanilla's
Options the way mods add theirs: Horizon Settings... and Mods... take the
Telemetry/Credits slots, and Horizon Settings opens Graphics, Advanced
Graphics, Shader Packs, Controller Settings, Extras and Mods, each a vanilla
options list with tooltips. Play with friends moves behind vanilla's Friends
buttons: the pause menu's opens Play with Friends (share, copy, stop), the
title screen's opens Join a Friend, and Direct Connection takes a full code.
Old files load as before: horizon.txt's menuStyle line and
horizon-graphics.txt's level line are ignored.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
🤖 Agent: merged after verify passed and the integration run on the desktop (main 34c3c1cf + the 14 contributor PRs: workspace tests 1,869/0, launcher 113, parity --changed 320/0).
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 Mods page (launcher 0.17) replaces "a mod browser is planned"; the Horizon
shader format is no longer called planned; Nightly-only things say Nightly.
The "I'm playing" ping has no server (DEFAULT_ENDPOINT is None), so the FAQ and
the privacy page say it is off instead of sent. The channel switch says it
needs the launcher release after 0.17. The README says what deploys the site.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
On a Mac without a JDK, preparing failed with "Java 25 is needed ...
/usr/bin/javac -version printed no version: Unable to locate a Java
Runtime": /usr/bin/javac is macOS's placeholder. Mojang's Java runtimes
are whole JDKs, javac included (java-runtime-epsilon is 25.0.1 on every
platform), and the official launcher has already downloaded one for
anyone who played 26.3.
- horizon-prepare: java::find also tries Minecraft's runtimes
(<game dir>/runtime/<component>/<platform>/<component>, jre.bundle on
macOS) and the launcher's pick (Options::java_home), and names the
macOS placeholder for what it is.
- launcher: when no JDK is found, downloads the runtime the version JSON
names (javaVersion.component) from Mojang into its own game folder,
every file checked against its sha1, executables and links as the
official launcher lays them out. A version's own preparer binary or
Python script gets it through JAVA_HOME and the PATH.
Checked for real on Linux: the download is 147 files, its javac 25.0.1
compiles and runs a class with --release 25.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01AxbYUJt4ShJFCdyLNCxF21
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>
.github/release-line.txt = 0.2: the release train's next runs publish v0.2.0 (a beta, as always)
and launcher@0.2.0 at once, "the first release of 0.2" (docs/versioning.md). Merge it only after
the bridges (the last dated game release, made stable, and launcher-v0.17.0) are out: the go-day
steps are in docs/versioning.md.
Also, because they say 0.2 is out: the site's FAQ explains the numbers, Install says an old launcher
updates twice, hosting.md gives the one command for a server that says it is up to date, and the
launcher's Cargo.toml says 0.2.0 so builds from source (packages) are on the 0.2 line.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
/docs has a left navigation and eleven pages written for players first, then
hosters, then contributors: what Horizon is, install, settings, multiplayer,
logs and bug reports, hosting (the launcher's Servers page and the command
line), modpacks, mods and data packs, performance, contributing and the FAQ.
/server redirects to /docs/hosting. The build checks every link between the
pages and every image.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Ludovic Marie
Claude