libretro/wiki/release-process.md

Release Process

This page documents the CI/CD pipeline: what each workflow does, how releases are built, and how to run the process manually.

CI workflows overview

The project uses 2 GitHub Actions workflows. All use only official GitHub actions (actions/checkout, actions/setup-python, actions/upload-pages-artifact, actions/deploy-pages). No third-party actions.

Budget target: ~175 minutes/month on the GitHub free tier.

Workflow	File	Trigger
Deploy Site	deploy-site.yml	Push to main (platforms, emulators, provenance, wiki, scripts, database.json, mkdocs.yml), manual
PR Validation	validate.yml	PR touching bios/**, platforms/** or emulators/**

Upstream BIOS lists are not scraped on a schedule. A maintainer runs the scrapers by hand (see adding a scraper), reviews the diff, and commits the refreshed platform YAML. Releases are built on the maintainer's machine and uploaded with gh, see cutting a release: the packs weigh 25 GB, more than a hosted runner should rebuild and re-upload.

deploy-site.yml - Deploy Documentation Site

Trigger. Push to main when any of these paths change: platforms/, emulators/, provenance/, wiki/, scripts/generate_site.py, scripts/generate_readme.py, scripts/verify.py, scripts/common.py, database.json, mkdocs.yml. Also manual dispatch.

The list is the set of inputs the site is generated from. Adding a new input to generate_site.py means adding its path here, or the site silently goes stale.

Steps:

1. Checkout, Python 3.12
2. Install pyyaml, mkdocs-material>=9.7.5,<10, pymdown-extensions>=10.14
3. Restore large files from the large-files release, refresh data directories
4. Run generate_site.py (converts YAML data into MkDocs pages and rewrites mkdocs.yml)
5. Run generate_readme.py (rebuilds README.md and CONTRIBUTING.md)
6. mkdocs build --strict to produce the static site
7. Run validate_site.py on the rendered HTML (metadata, headings, image alternatives, duplicate ids, local links and fragments)
8. Require the committed README and CONTRIBUTING to match what the generator just produced. write_if_changed() compares content with the timestamp line stripped, so a run that only moves the clock leaves the files untouched and the check stays meaningful
9. Upload artifact, deploy to GitHub Pages

Data contracts are validated with scripts/validate_schemas.py before the site is generated: database.json, the install and target manifests, the site API envelopes and the stats file, plus the semantic invariants those schemas cannot express (declared totals matching their lists, no destination both installed and omitted).

The site is deployed via the github-pages environment using the official actions/deploy-pages action. Pages deployments are queued rather than cancelled (cancel-in-progress: false): cancelling one mid-flight leaves the deployment stuck and the next runs time out waiting on it.

--strict turns MkDocs warnings into failures, so a broken internal link or a dangling anchor fails the build instead of shipping. The validation: block in mkdocs.yml is what promotes unrecognized links and missing anchors to warnings in the first place.

The theme version is pinned on both sides: >=9.7.5 because that is the release which caps mkdocs < 2 (MkDocs 2.0 ships without a license), <10 so a major theme release cannot change the site without a deliberate bump.

validate.yml - PR Validation

Trigger. Pull requests that modify bios/**, platforms/**, emulators/**, schemas/**, scripts/**, tests/** or install.py.

Concurrency. Per-PR group, cancel in-progress.

Four parallel jobs:

validate-bios. Diffs the PR to find changed BIOS files, runs validate_pr.py --markdown on each, and posts the validation report as a PR comment (hash verification, database match status).

validate-configs. Runs python scripts/validate_schemas.py --source-only, which validates every platform YAML against schemas/platform.schema.json and every emulator profile against schemas/emulator.schema.json. Both schemas set additionalProperties: false, so a typo in a field name fails the job instead of being silently ignored.

run-tests. Runs python -m unittest discover tests -v. Must pass before merge.

label-pr. Auto-labels the PR based on changed paths:

Path pattern	Label
bios/	bios
bios/{Manufacturer}/	system:{manufacturer}
platforms/	platform-config
scripts/	automation

Large files management

Files larger than 50 MB are stored as assets on a permanent GitHub release named large-files (to keep the git repository lightweight).

Examples: PS3UPDAT.PUP, PSVUPDAT.PUP, PSP2UPDAT.PUP, the DSi NAND images, maclc3.zip, Firmware.19.0.0.zip (Switch), the QEMU EDK2 firmware, the ScummVM data bundle, the EasyRPG soundfont, the Dolphin/Ishiiruka SD card images, and the arcade sets over 100 MB. .gitignore is the authoritative list: every bios/ path listed there is a release asset.

Storage. Listed in .gitignore so they stay out of git history. The large-files release is excluded from cleanup (the build workflow only deletes version-tagged releases).

Build-time restore. The build workflow downloads all assets from large-files into .cache/large/ and copies them to their expected paths before pack generation.

Upload. To add or update a large file:

gh release upload large-files "bios/Sony/PS3/PS3UPDAT.PUP#PS3UPDAT.PUP"

Local cache. generate_pack.py calls fetch_large_file() which downloads from the release and caches in .cache/large/ for subsequent runs.

Cutting a release

Releasing is deliberate and local. Nothing on GitHub builds a pack: the pipeline runs here, the archives are checked here, and gh uploads them.

# 1. Full pipeline, online, so data directories and MAME/FBNeo hashes are fresh
python scripts/pipeline.py

# 2. RetroPie, which is archived but still served
python scripts/generate_pack.py --platform retropie --output-dir dist/
python scripts/generate_pack.py --platform retropie --verify-packs --output-dir dist/

# 3. Checksums of the full ZIPs, before splitting
(cd dist && sha256sum *.zip > SHA256SUMS.txt)

# 4. Split anything over 2 GB (GitHub asset cap); 7-Zip and PeaZip open .001 directly
for f in dist/*.zip; do
  [ "$(stat -c%s "$f")" -gt 2000000000 ] || continue
  split --bytes=1900M --numeric-suffixes=1 --suffix-length=3 "$f" "$f." && rm "$f"
done

# 5. Create the release as a DRAFT, upload every asset, and only then publish it.
#    A public release with half its assets is a broken download for everyone
#    during the whole upload.
DATE=$(date +%Y.%m.%d)
gh release create "v${DATE}" --draft --title "BIOS Pack v${DATE}" --notes-file notes.md
for f in dist/SHA256SUMS.txt dist/*.zip dist/*.zip.0*; do
  [ -f "$f" ] && gh release upload "v${DATE}" "$f#$(basename "$f")" --clobber
done
gh release view "v${DATE}" --json assets --jq '.assets | length'   # expect every file
gh release edit "v${DATE}" --draft=false --latest

# 6. Keep the three most recent releases plus large-files
gh release list --json tagName,createdAt \
  --jq 'sort_by(.createdAt) | reverse | .[].tagName' | grep -v '^large-files$' \
  | tail -n +4 | while read tag; do gh release delete "$tag" --yes --cleanup-tag; done

One pack per platform, the full one: the platform's list plus everything its cores load. Platform-only and per-emulator packs are build options, not release assets, since a lighter pack means a core that fails with no message. The release notes follow the previous release: the quick install commands, the pack table with file counts and sizes, what changed since the previous tag, and the contributors of the closed issues. SHA256SUMS.txt lists the checksums of the full ZIPs before splitting.