Gate releases on a pinned cross-version bundle upgrade smoke test

[Staphylococcus]

Parent: #91

Depends on: #95, #96, #98, #100

Outcome

Prove the supported upgrade contract against a real previous updater-capable release bundle and make regressions block stable release promotion.

Scope

• Add a dedicated cross-version upgrade smoke script with explicit previous and candidate archive inputs.
• Use the first publicly released updater-capable prerelease as the pinned baseline once it exists; v1.3.0 and other versions without updates install cannot initiate an assisted upgrade.
• Install the supported baseline into an isolated root and user home and verify that its host layout passes the initial compatibility preflight.
• Populate non-default configuration, prerelease update preference, native credentials, and representative installed integration state.
• Apply the candidate upgrade path and verify runtime, manifest, units, hooks, desktop files, config pointer, and service policy.
• Prove configuration and credentials are preserved across the supported version boundary.
• Add negative controls that make the baseline layout incompatible and prove refusal before network or mutation.
• Run the archive-driven cross-version smoke test in CI before candidate publication.
• Run a production-GitHub prerelease canary after publication and before stable promotion.
• Document that versions predating the updater require a normal manual installation of an updater-capable version before assisted upgrades become available.

Acceptance criteria

• The test uses a pinned updater-capable previous artifact and verifies its digest before extraction.
• The previous installation passes the runtime compatibility checks.
• The supported baseline upgrades to the candidate without interactive configuration or pairing.
• Candidate identity and all owned integration files match the new bundle.
• Configuration, updates.channel, and credentials remain unchanged.
• Incompatible-layout controls are refused without network, sudo, or mutation.
• Stable release promotion depends on successful automated cross-version coverage and a production-path prerelease canary.

Out of scope

• Making versions without updater support initiate an assisted upgrade.
• Supporting arbitrary historical versions.
• Host- or distribution-specific upgrade behavior.
• Treating the initial compatibility check set as permanent or exhaustive.
• General installer rollback testing beyond the partial-failure contract.

[Staphylococcus]

Production baseline observation — 2026-09-01

The first updater-capable public baseline is now available:

• promotion PR: Promote v1.4.0-beta.2 prerelease #112
• release workflow: https://github.com/Staphylococcus/LG_Buddy/actions/runs/33545215537 (validate, bundle smoke, and publish all succeeded)
• release: https://github.com/Staphylococcus/LG_Buddy/releases/tag/v1.4.0-beta.2
• tag, prerelease, and dev SHA: 77c8f46
• archive: lg-buddy-1.4.0-beta.2-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz
• archive size: 3051471 bytes
• archive SHA-256: 883e6cb869cbe60988a195acac2e15864d904797edfefbb7d90052eff9a17d32

Independent public HTTPS downloads of the archive and sha256sums.txt succeeded, and sha256sum -c passed. The extracted manifest and shipped binary both reported:

• version: 1.4.0-beta.2
• channel: prerelease
• target: x86_64-unknown-linux-musl
• commit: 77c8f46

A live updates check from the shipped binary, using isolated configuration with updates.channel=prerelease and an empty cache, observed v1.4.0-beta.2 through the production GitHub API and reported it as current/latest. The normalized cached response includes archive asset 539980839 and checksum asset 539980872 with their published sizes, digests, API URLs, and browser download URLs.

On the local NixOS machine, updates install refused during the initial host-layout preflight before release discovery, confirmation, sudo, or mutation. That is the expected unsupported-layout behavior and is not treated as cross-version coverage.

This pins v1.4.0-beta.2 as #99s previous updater-capable artifact. A real production-path cross-version upgrade cannot be claimed yet: it requires the next updater-capable prerelease as the candidate. That observation should then drive the deterministic mock-backed fixture and stable-promotion gate.

[Staphylococcus]

Production upgrade canary — 2026-09-02

The beta.2 → beta.3 production-path canary is now complete:

• promotion PR: Promote v1.4.0-beta.3 prerelease #117
• release workflow: https://github.com/Staphylococcus/LG_Buddy/actions/runs/33612608371
• release: https://github.com/Staphylococcus/LG_Buddy/releases/tag/v1.4.0-beta.3
• tag, prerelease, and dev SHA: 730f1974757e63d4e24b752d39c18a6e3430e763
• archive: lg-buddy-1.4.0-beta.3-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz
• archive size: 3049555 bytes
• archive SHA-256: ec8e024e7eb243ec72ad12eadd7b9ba5c3d5ea4d9ac35e07f583ce053e0454fd
• release state: published prerelease, immutable

Independent public HTTPS downloads of the archive and sha256sums.txt succeeded, and sha256sum -c passed. The embedded manifest reports version 1.4.0-beta.3, channel prerelease, target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl, and the exact promotion SHA above.

The production canary installed the pinned, digest-verified beta.2 baseline into an isolated root, discovered beta.3 through the public GitHub API, passed both host and candidate preflight, upgraded through the user-confirmed CLI path, and verified the beta.3 runtime and owned installation state. A fresh-cache updates check from the installed beta.3 binary then observed beta.3 as both current and latest.

The workflow artifact production-upgrade-canary-v1.4.0-beta.3 contains the canary transcript and schema-1 sanitized GitHub response recording. The recording captures the one-item latest-release response, tag lookup, tag ref resolving to the promotion SHA, published asset metadata, and one-hop release-assets.githubusercontent.com redirect shape without retaining signed query values. This is the observed fixture for deterministic mock-backed coverage.

This supplies the required prerelease production-canary evidence. Stable promotion to main remains the closure gate.

[Staphylococcus]

Implemented by PR #113 and released in v1.4.0. Stable promotion passed the pinned beta.2 cross-version bundle smoke and the beta.3 production canary gate. Release: https://github.com/Staphylococcus/LG_Buddy/releases/tag/v1.4.0