Versioning and Releases

How Chatons determines version numbers and builds release artifacts.

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Version Bump Script

scripts/version.js examines Git commit messages since the latest semver tag and determines the bump type.

How It Works

1. Find the latest Git tag matching v?X.Y.Z (sorted by version:refname)
2. If no tag exists, start from 0.0.0
3. Read all commit subjects since that tag (git log TAG..HEAD --oneline --no-merges)
4. Parse each subject for conventional commit type
5. Determine bump: major, minor, patch, or none
6. Update package.json > version
7. Print the new version to stdout

Commit Parsing Rules

The script recognizes these commit types:

Type	Example
feat	feat: add model picker to extensions
fix	fix: prevent crash on empty model list
docs	docs: update user guide
style	style: format composer component
refactor	refactor: simplify auth flow
perf	perf: cache model list
test	test: add settings validation tests
chore	chore: update dependencies

Bump Precedence

Priority	Condition	Bump
1	Subject contains BREAKING CHANGE or ends with !	major
2	At least one feat: commit	minor
3	At least one fix: commit	patch
4	No qualifying commit type	none

What It Is Not

• Not a complete Conventional Commits parser (does not parse multi-line footers)
• Not a full semantic-release implementation
• BREAKING CHANGE detection checks the subject line only, not the commit body

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CI Workflow

.github/workflows/build-all-platforms.yml handles the release pipeline.

Jobs

1. Determine and Set Version

   • Checks out with full history
   • Runs node scripts/version.js
   • Commits updated package.json if version changed ([skip ci])
   • Outputs version for downstream jobs

2. Build macOS ARM64 (and other platform jobs)

   • Syncs package.json to the computed version
   • Determines signing mode based on available secrets
   • Builds renderer and Electron main process
   • Runs Electron Builder
   • Validates and signs artifacts (see Signing Guide)

Ignored Paths

Push and pull-request triggers ignore:

• docs/**
• README.md
• **/*.md

Documentation-only changes do not trigger release builds.

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Artifact Naming

Current Electron Builder configuration:

Platform	Pattern	Example
macOS DMG	${productName}-latest-${arch}.${ext}	Chatons-latest-arm64.dmg
Windows NSIS	${productName}Setup-latest.${ext}	ChatonsSetup-latest.exe
Linux	${productName}-latest.${ext}	Chatons-latest.AppImage

Artifact filenames use latest and architecture, not the semver number. Do not assume semver appears in filenames.

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Local Usage

# Print the computed version (or apply the bump)
node scripts/version.js

# Run version tests
npm run version:test

Test files:

• scripts/test-version.js
• scripts/test-version-logic.js

Manual Override

No dedicated release CLI for manual overrides. The fallback is editing package.json > version directly and committing.

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Related

• Signing Guide -- macOS signing and notarization
• Developer Guide -- Overall architecture