VERSION at the repository root is the release number and the only place it is
written down — a file rather than `git describe`, because a source archive, a
shallow CI checkout and a container built without .git have no tags to
describe. Cutting a release is editing that file and merging it; CI creates the
annotated v<VERSION> tag once green, only on the commit that raised the number,
and never moves it. Servers are pinned to these.
Two modes, and the difference is the point. RELEASE=v1.0.0 pins a server to an
immutable tag, checked out detached: it moves when someone decides it moves.
BRANCH=main follows the edge, where CI tags a commit only after it is pushed.
The mode is remembered, so re-running the updater on a pinned box does not
quietly walk it back onto main.
Going backwards is refused, by commit ancestry rather than by comparing version
strings — a tag can be cut from anywhere, and only ancestry says whether history
is going back. The schema has already moved forward by then, and the migrations
needed to reverse it are not in the older checkout at all.
What the console reports comes from a manifest written atomically after every
step succeeded, never from live git: git says what the files are, not whether
the deployment came up. So a failed update keeps reporting the version that is
actually serving — including its version number, not the newer one the checkout
has already moved to. A deployment pinned to the tag reads "1.0.0 (abc1234)";
anything else reads "1.0.0-dev (abc1234) · main", because every commit after the
tag still carries VERSION=1.0.0 and is not that release. Reporting it as one is
how a bug gets filed against the wrong code.
Codex reviewed the design before it was written and the result six times after.
Its findings, all real: the version had to come from the manifest too, not just
the commit; branch names need JSON escaping or the manifest silently vanishes; a
`case` glob does not anchor and accepted 1x.2y.3garbage; pinning to the commit a
server already sits on skipped recording the mode, and then skipped detaching;
a manifest that failed to write would never be repaired; an unparseable
timestamp would 500 every admin page; and an empty tag list read as a
connectivity failure.
466 tests green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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