🤖 Agent: verified by Ludovic's AI agent (contrib gate 20): release notes keep wrapped known issues. It passed in this wave's union with main on the Mac mini: the selected parity harnesses (332/332, then 122/122 on the final union), clippy -D warnings and the tests, and lan_e2e with the host on its server thread and in-frame (18/18 each). Thanks @rdbtCVS!
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>
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 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>
The launcher (game installs and its own updates) and `horizon-server update` fetch a release's
SHA256SUMS and SHA256SUMS.sig, check the signature against the keys built in from
crates/horizon-release-sign/release-keys.txt and the archive against the signed SHA-256, and
refuse anything unsigned, signed for another tag or by another key, or that doesn't match, with a
message saying why. Merge only once release-keys.txt lists the key and a signed stable release
exists: until then every download is refused.
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>
LAUNCHER_PATHS and launcher.yml's push paths now list horizon-bench,
horizon-friends, horizon-mods and horizon-port-pack too, the launcher's
path packages per cargo metadata. A change there (like the horizon-mods
dependency that left launcher/Cargo.lock stale) then builds and releases
the launcher instead of going unnoticed.
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>
- First run (and when CONSENT_VERSION changes): a question over the launcher
with four switches, all off, what each sends in plain words, what is never
sent, "View what would be sent" (the exact JSON), and "Send nothing" /
"Save choices".
- Settings → Data collection: the same switches any time, the install ID and
what waits, "View what would be sent" and "Delete my data" (server deletion,
outbox cleared, new install ID).
- The outbox is sent at start and on close (at most 3 s), only when there is a
server (none yet) and only what the player allows.
- CLI `horizon-launcher data status|allow|deny|show|delete|send|bug|benchmark`
and MCP tools data_collection, set_data_collection, data_preview,
delete_my_data, report_bug. Bug reports and benchmark uploads are printed for
the player to confirm; logs are scrubbed and lose chat lines.
- horizon-telemetry joins the launcher's paths (launcher.yml, release_train,
pr_ready).
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>
Today's main would have been titled "Controllers, controllers, controllers and 17 more changes".
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>
Ludovic Marie
rdbtCVS