Releases and hosting

.github/workflows/build.yml has three channels:

The nightly cron exits early when main has not moved since the last nightly. The nightly release is updated in place: its nightly tag is moved and its assets replaced, so there is one prerelease however many nights run. Its notes link scmjs.dev/nightly, which runs the same commit.

Download links#

GitHub redirects /releases/latest/download/<asset> to the newest release that is not a prerelease or a draft, so the download buttons on the site are plain links that never need updating and never resolve to a nightly:

https://github.com/scm-js/scm-js/releases/latest/download/scmJS-windows-x64-setup.exe
https://github.com/scm-js/scm-js/releases/latest/download/scmJS-windows-x64.zip
https://github.com/scm-js/scm-js/releases/latest/download/scmJS-macos-arm64.dmg
https://github.com/scm-js/scm-js/releases/latest/download/scmJS-macos-x64.dmg
https://github.com/scm-js/scm-js/releases/latest/download/scmJS-linux-x86_64.AppImage
https://github.com/scm-js/scm-js/releases/latest/download/scmJS-linux-amd64.deb
https://github.com/scm-js/scm-js/releases/latest/download/scmJS-web.zip
https://github.com/scm-js/scm-js/releases/download/nightly/scmJS-windows-x64-setup.exe

The redirect can only resolve a fixed file name, so asset names carry no version; the version is in the release title, the notes and latest*.yml. To withdraw a bad release, tick "This is a pre-release" on it and the redirect falls back to the one before.

The container image#

docker/Dockerfile is nginx with the built web bundle and the default plugins' runtimes, pushed to ghcr.io/scm-js/scm-js on a tagged release only, as latest, the full version, and the moving X.Y and X. One manifest covers linux/amd64 and linux/arm64.

docker run --rm -p 8080:80 ghcr.io/scm-js/scm-js:latest   # http://localhost:8080
npm run build:image                                       # build it locally, tagged scmjs

The image carries no game data: .dockerignore keeps the extracted trees out and docker/nginx.conf answers 404 for those paths, so a container asks through Help ▸ Game Data… like the hosted editor. Mounting an extracted tree is in game-data.md.

Cutting a release#

Run the Release workflow (.github/workflows/release.yml) from the Actions tab. It takes the version (0.3, 1.0 and 1 are padded to three parts; blank releases the version the nightlies have been building), an optional notes box, and a dry_run tick that does everything except push.

It refuses to run anywhere but main, refuses a version whose tag exists or that is not newer than the last release, and runs lint, the tests (the network suite included), the build and a check of the container image before writing anything. Then it commits the version into package.json and the lock file, tags that commit vX.Y.Z, and starts the Build workflow on the tag, which produces everything else.

Nothing moves package.json on to a next version afterwards: on main it names the last release. A nightly is named <base>-nightly.<date>.<run number>, where the base is a patch bump of the newest release tag (scripts/next-version.mjs). Every job writes the version into package.json before building; Vite injects it as __APP_VERSION__, read through src/version.ts, and electron-builder writes it into latest*.yml.

The hand-written part of a release's notes comes from docs/releases/<version>.md (the full three-part name), committed to main before the release is cut, or from the Release workflow's notes input, which wins over the file. Either goes above GitHub's generated list of commits. The pre-flight prints what it found, so a dry run shows the body. docs/releases/README.md is the convention.

The hosted builds#

The hosted editor is one release with everything else: the site, the installers, the image and the notes come from one tag. To put scmjs.dev/editor back on an older version, run Build on that tag. The docs site can also be deployed without a release, from Actions ▸ Docs site ▸ Run workflow, so a fix to the guides goes live at once; the next release replaces it with the tag's own pages.

The nightly is built with SCMJS_SITE=nightly. The two editors share the scmjs.dev origin, because both need the game's page at /play/ beside them, and the nightly keeps its preferences, recent files and plugins under names of its own. The game data is the exception: both editors and the play page read one copy, so a nightly that changes how that copy is stored must keep it readable by the last release.

Variables and secrets#

None of these is required: a fork builds and releases without them, and a deploy that lacks its own is skipped with a notice.

The two deploy keys must be listed as bypass actors in the target repository's branch ruleset.