bread-ecosystem/docs/release-channels.md

Release channel policy

There are two independent distribution channels in the bread ecosystem, plus a third "neither" state for repos that aren't distributed yet. Every repo under Breadway/ should sit in exactly one of these three buckets, and its .forgejo/workflows/ directory + packaging metadata should match that bucket exactly — no more files, no fewer.

The two channels

bakery channel (bakery install <name>, curl .../get | sh, or a raw binary download from dl.breadway.dev / the GitHub release page). A repo is on this channel if and only if all of the following are true:

1. It has a bakery.toml at the root (or, for a multi-product repo like bread-ecosystem, one per product directory).
2. It has an entry in bread-ecosystem's registry/bread-ecosystem.toml. scripts/gen-index.sh only ever looks at repos listed there — a bakery.toml that isn't backed by a registry entry is inert.
3. It has a .forgejo/workflows/release.yml (or a product-specific name like release-bread-theme.yml / release-bakery.yml for multi-product repos) that builds the binary, drops it under /srv/breadway-dl/<name>/, copies bakery.toml alongside it, regenerates index.json via bread-ecosystem/scripts/gen-index.sh, and uploads the same artifacts to a GitHub release as a fallback mirror.

All three must be present together. Two out of three is a bug, not a partial rollout — either finish the third piece or remove the other two.

pacman channel (pacman -S <name> from the self-hosted [breadway] repo, built via AUR-style PKGBUILDs). A repo is on this channel if and only if:

1. It has a PKGBUILD under packaging/ (either packaging/PKGBUILD or packaging/arch/PKGBUILD — both patterns exist in the wild, pick whichever a sibling repo of the same shape already uses).
2. It has a .forgejo/workflows/package.yml that builds the package in an archlinux:latest container and curl -X PUTs the resulting .pkg.tar.zst to https://git.breadway.dev/api/packages/Breadway/arch/os.

A repo can be on both channels, bakery only (bread, breadbar, breadbox, breadcrumbs, breadpad, breadpaper, breadclip, breadmon, breadsearch, breadshot, breadhelp, bos-settings, bread-theme, breadcast, breadarr, bakery itself), pacman only (breadlock — installs a root-owned /etc/pam.d/breadlock PAM service file with no per-user equivalent, so it can never move to bakery), or neither (dev-only / not yet released). Desktop apps dropped pacman packaging; bakery-channel install is the supported path. bakery still carries a leftover package.yml / packaging/arch/PKGBUILD from when it was also published to the [breadway] pacman repo.

bos is a fourth, deliberately special case: it ships as an ISO, not a binary, via its own release-iso.yml. It is never on either channel and should never carry a bakery.toml or PKGBUILD.

Build tracks (stable/beta/dev) — orthogonal to channels

Within the bakery channel only, a repo can additionally publish up to three tracks: stable, beta, and dev. Don't confuse "track" with "channel" above — channel is how a binary reaches a user (bakery vs. pacman); track is which build of a bakery-channel package they get.

There is no per-track branch anymore — every bakery-channel repo has exactly one long-lived branch, main. Tracks are driven entirely by what you push, not which branch you push to:

Track	Index URL	Artifact root	Trigger
stable	dl.breadway.dev/index.json	/srv/breadway-dl/<pkg>/<ver>/	push tag vX.Y.Z
beta	dl.breadway.dev/beta/index.json	/srv/breadway-dl/beta/<pkg>/<ver>/	push tag vX.Y.Z-rc.N
dev	dl.breadway.dev/dev/index.json	/srv/breadway-dl/dev/<pkg>/<ver>/	push to branch main

scripts/gen-index.sh takes a TRACK env var (default stable) to select which subtree it reads/writes — this didn't need to change. Dev/beta builds skip the GitHub Release upload step entirely (no release-per-commit spam) — dl.breadway.dev is their only distribution point.

Why no beta/dev branches: the old model had dev/beta/main as three separate branches, with beta cut from dev periodically and main supposed to move forward only via a beta merge. In practice main rotted silently in most repos — the "merge beta into main" step was a manual, easy-to-forget action across a dozen-plus repos with no team and no calendar enforcement, and it also collided with a real Forgejo Actions gotcha: tag-triggered workflows resolve which version of the workflow YAML to run from the repo's default branch, not the tagged commit's branch, so a stale main could silently run stale release logic even when the tag itself pointed at fresh code. Collapsing everything onto one branch removes the class of bug entirely — there's nothing left to fall out of sync.

The full lifecycle (see also CONTRIBUTING.md): day-to-day work lands on feature/<name> or fix/<issue> branches, merged into main. main publishes a fresh dev-track build on every push — this is the "test for a while, fix forward with another push" loop. When you want to stabilize before a real release, tag a release candidate directly off whatever commit on main you're happy with: git tag vX.Y.Z-rc.1 && git push origin vX.Y.Z-rc.1 (both remotes). "Freezing" is just pausing pushes to main while the RC gets tested, not a branch operation — cut -rc.2, -rc.3, etc. for further fixes without needing to touch any branch. Once an RC has gone without issues, tag the real release the same way, dropping the -rc.N suffix (vX.Y.Z) — that's what fires release.yml.

Auto-versioning: dev computes its build version from the latest published stable vX.Y.Z tag (via git ls-remote --tags, filtered to exclude any tag containing a -, not Cargo.toml — Cargo.toml can drift stale relative to the actual last release) plus a -dev.<timestamp>+<sha> suffix. beta needs no computation at all — the RC tag itself (X.Y.Z-rc.N) is already valid semver and is used as the version verbatim. bakery's semver check (is_newer), backed by the real semver crate, already orders these correctly with zero special-casing: a prerelease identifier sorts below the same version without one, and dev < rc alphabetically, giving X.Y.Z-dev... < X.Y.Z-rc.N < X.Y.Z for the same base version.

Adding dev/beta to a bakery-channel repo: copy dev-bakery.yml / rc-bakery.yml (or bread's dev-release.yml / rc-release.yml if the repo isn't part of this monorepo) from bread-ecosystem/bread, and swap the repo/binary names the same way the checklist below describes for release.yml. No branch setup needed beyond the repo's single main. Not every bakery-channel repo needs beta/dev on day one — gen-index.sh silently skips any product with no release dir under a given track's tree, same as it already does for an unreleased product on stable.

Client side: bakery track show / bakery track set <stable|beta|dev> remembers a global track preference (~/.local/state/bakery/installed.json) and validates the target track's index is reachable and signed before switching — it never auto-reinstalls on switch, run bakery update --all afterwards.

mirror.yml is not part of this policy

Every repo previously carried its own .forgejo/workflows/mirror.yml doing a git clone --mirror + push to GitHub with a per-repo MIRROR_TOKEN secret. That pattern is being replaced ecosystem-wide by Forgejo's native Push Mirror feature, provisioned centrally by bread-ecosystem/scripts/setup-push-mirrors.sh against the live repo list — see that script and scripts/cleanup-old-mirror-workflows.sh. Once the migration is confirmed working, no repo should have a mirror.yml and this document doesn't require one. Don't add mirror.yml to a repo that's missing it; that gap is intentional and about to be moot everywhere.

Checklist for adding a repo to a channel

• Bakery: write bakery.toml, add a [[products]] entry to bread-ecosystem/registry/bread-ecosystem.toml, copy a sibling's dev-release.yml / rc-release.yml / release.yml trio (prefer one with the same shape: single binary vs. binary + systemd service — compare against bread's if there's a service to install, breadmon's if not) and swap the repo name / binary name / PKG_DIR. No branch setup beyond the repo's single main.
• Pacman: write packaging/PKGBUILD (or packaging/arch/PKGBUILD), copy a sibling's package.yml and swap the repo/package name and system_deps→pacman -Syu package list.
• Never add either file type "just in case." An unused bakery.toml or PKGBUILD is exactly the kind of drift this document exists to prevent (see the breadlock/breadarr/bos-settings history in the audit that produced this doc — two of those had a stray bakery.toml nothing served, one was missing the registry entry + release.yml that would have made an existing bakery.toml real).

Current state (as of this pass)

Repo	bakery	pacman	tracks	notes
bread-ecosystem (bakery product)	yes	leftover package.yml	stable, beta, dev	bakery-channel (curl -fsSL https://get.breadway.dev | sh) is the supported install; package.yml + packaging/arch/PKGBUILD remain from when bakery was also published to [breadway]
bread-ecosystem (bread-theme product)	yes	no	stable, beta, dev	single-trunk model
bread, breadbar, breadbox, breadcrumbs, breadpad, breadpaper	yes	no	stable, beta, dev	pacman packaging (PKGBUILD + package.yml) dropped — bakery-only, single-trunk model
breadclip, breadmon, breadsearch, breadshot	yes	no	stable, beta, dev	single-trunk model
breadhelp, bos-settings	yes	no	stable, beta, dev	bakery-channel desktop/settings apps; not pacman
breadlock	no	yes	n/a	deliberate, permanent exception — installs a root-owned /etc/pam.d/breadlock PAM service file with no per-user equivalent, so it can never move to bakery
bos	no	no	n/a	ISO-only via release-iso.yml; ships via a manual local build (build-local.sh), not a CI track — see its own branch note below
breadcast	yes	no	stable, beta, dev	bakery product; not included in the BOS ISO
breadarr	yes	no	stable, beta, dev	bakery product; homelab, not shipped on BOS

bos doesn't follow the tracks table above (it has no dev/beta/stable publish cadence — ISO builds are deliberate and manual) but does share the single-main-branch model for the same rot-avoidance reason. It additionally carries a stable branch that CI fast-forwards to whatever commit the latest vX.Y.Z tag points at — a marker only, never merged into by hand, so it can't drift the way a manually-promoted branch did before.