Releasing Kinema

Every push to the release branch runs .github/workflows/release.yml. The workflow builds installers for macOS, Windows, Linux (AppImage, deb, rpm, tarball, Flatpak) and FreeBSD, plus the web build, and creates or updates a draft GitHub Release named Kinema v<version>. Nobody sees a draft until a maintainer publishes it.

User-facing names say Kinema. Files, binaries and ids stay lowercase (kinema-<version>-<platform>-<arch>.<ext>, com.ncdev.kinema).

Cutting a release

1. Bump the version on main. It lives in exactly one place, [workspace.package] version in the root Cargo.toml; every crate inherits it and the packaging scripts read it from there:

   cargo xtask version                 # prints the current version, e.g. 0.2.1
   cargo xtask version set 0.3.0       # or 0.3.0-rc.1; updates Cargo.toml and Cargo.lock

   Commit the change (Cargo.toml + Cargo.lock) through the normal review flow, as a Release: Kinema v0.3.0 commit whose message says what changed for users.

2. Merge main into release (or fast-forward it) and push. The workflow starts by itself.

3. Wait for the draft. When every job is done (macOS notarization is the slow part), the Releases page has a draft Kinema v0.3.0, targeting the pushed commit, with every artifact and SHA256SUMS.txt. The notes are generated from the merged pull requests.

4. Check it. Download an installer or two and read the job summaries. A ::warning:: there means a signing secret was missing and that artifact is unsigned.

5. Publish the draft in the GitHub UI. Publishing creates the v0.3.0 tag. A version with a pre-release suffix (-rc.1) is marked as a pre-release.

Pushing to release again before you publish rebuilds the same draft and replaces its assets. Once the draft is published, the workflow refuses to touch that version again: bump it first.

Test runs: Actions › Release › Run workflow runs the whole pipeline by hand. The optional version input (such as 0.3.0-rc.1) overrides Cargo.toml for that run only; each build job applies it with cargo xtask version set before building. The signing jobs (macOS, Windows) and the draft-release job run in the release environment, which only the release branch can use, so pick that branch for a full run. Run from any other branch, it is a dry run: the jobs that sign nothing (Linux, Flatpak, FreeBSD, web) build and upload their artifacts to the run, the signing jobs are refused, and the draft-release job, which needs them, is skipped.

What gets built

kinema --version and kinema-cli --version print the version from Cargo.toml.

Fonts. Every build job checks out craft-fonts at a pinned commit (craft-fonts-ref in .github/workflows/release.yml and freebsd.yml) and builds with CRAFT_FONTS_DIR and CRAFT_FONTS_REQUIRED=1, so releases embed its fonts and fail rather than ship without them (the web build embeds only the UI font, to stay small). The packages carry each embedded font's licence (copy_font_licences in packaging/env.sh). Bump the pins deliberately, in every job at once.

macOS

packaging/macos/package.sh builds aarch64-apple-darwin and x86_64-apple-darwin with MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=11.0, joins them with lipo and assembles Kinema.app:

• Info.plist is generated from Info.plist.in (bundle id com.ncdev.kinema, the version and the build commit).
• Signing uses the hardened runtime and a secure timestamp, with the entitlements in entitlements.plist. The Developer ID certificate is imported into a temporary keychain by packaging/macos/import-cert.sh.
• Notarization: the app is sent with xcrun notarytool submit, then the ticket is stapled and checked with stapler validate. The app goes on a DMG (hdiutil makehybrid), which is signed and notarized too. The universal kinema-cli is signed the same way, zipped, and the zip is notarized. Its Finder window (background, icon size and positions) comes from packaging/macos/dmg/, and its volume is named Kinema without the version, which the window's background needs; the DMG file name keeps the version.

Locally, without certificates, the script signs ad hoc and skips notarization, which is enough to check the bundle and the DMG on your own Mac (packaging/macos/package.sh).

Windows

packaging/windows/package.ps1 -Arch x64|x86|arm64 builds with +crt-static, so neither the MSI nor the portable zip needs the Visual C++ redistributable.

• kinema.wxs (WiX) is a per-machine install into Program Files with a Start Menu shortcut and an App Paths entry (Win+R kinema). Same-version upgrades are allowed, so release candidates replace each other.
• The ARM64 build is cross-compiled on the x64 runner. .github/workflows/windows-arm64.yml installs that MSI on a Windows 11 ARM64 runner, runs kinema-cli --version natively and uninstalls.
• Signing: packaging/windows/sign.ps1 signs the executables and then the .msi with signtool, using whichever material is present: a .pfx certificate (WINDOWS_CERTIFICATE, base64, and WINDOWS_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD) or Azure Trusted Signing (the AZURE_* secrets). With neither, it warns and leaves the files unsigned, so test builds still produce installers.

Linux

packaging/linux/package.sh builds the release binaries and packages them as an AppImage, a .deb and an .rpm (with nfpm, from nfpm.yaml) and a plain .tar.gz tree. The packages install both programs, the desktop entry, the AppStream metainfo, the icons and the licence files.

The Linux tarball includes install.sh. Extract it, open a terminal in the extracted directory and run ./install.sh to install both programs and their desktop integration under ~/.local (no administrator permissions needed). The application-menu entry uses the installed binary's absolute path; add ~/.local/bin to PATH for terminal commands. Run the installer again to update. For a system-wide installation, use sudo ./install.sh --prefix /usr/local. A custom absolute --prefix is also supported; its share directory must be in the desktop's data search path to appear in the menu. Prefixes containing =, % or control characters are rejected for desktop-launcher compatibility.

The jobs run on ubuntu-22.04, the oldest GitHub-hosted image, so the binaries only need glibc 2.35 or newer: Ubuntu 22.04+, Debian 12+, Fedora 36+ and RHEL 10. The deb (libc6 (>= 2.35)) and the rpm (glibc >= 2.35) both declare that floor, so older systems refuse the install. Moving the job to a newer image raises the floor, so do it deliberately and update nfpm.yaml with it. After packaging, the job prints the .deb's metadata and contents, runs ldd on the binary and runs each AppImage with --version.

AppImage updates. Each AppImage embeds update information, gh-releases-zsync|storytold|kinema|latest|kinema-*-linux-<arch>.AppImage.zsync, and appimagetool writes the matching .zsync beside it (the job installs zsync for zsyncmake). AppImageUpdate and AppImageLauncher then fetch only the changed blocks from the newest published (non-pre-release) release. The job checks both with --appimage-updateinformation and test -s.

Flatpak. The flatpak jobs (x86_64 on ubuntu-24.04, aarch64 on ubuntu-24.04-arm) run packaging/linux/flatpak-bundle.sh on the Linux job's tarball: it installs the binaries with packaging/linux/flatpak/com.ncdev.kinema.bundle.yml into a single-file bundle, kinema-<v>-linux-<arch>.flatpak (no Rust build, so it takes a minute), then installs it and runs kinema-cli --version in the sandbox. Users install it with flatpak install --user <file>; the freedesktop runtime comes from Flathub. packaging/linux/flatpak/com.ncdev.kinema.yml is the from-source manifest for a Flathub submission (its header says how to build it). Both manifests must keep the same runtime and finish-args, and install the same programs: the app and kinema-cli, which runs the headless commands and the MCP server in the sandbox (flatpak run --command=kinema-cli com.ncdev.kinema mcp). packaging-lint checks this.

FreeBSD

GitHub has no FreeBSD runners, so the freebsd job builds in a FreeBSD 14.3 VM (vmactions/freebsd-vm, pinned by commit) on ubuntu-latest. packaging/freebsd/package.sh builds both programs and packs a /usr/local-style tree as kinema-<v>-freebsd-x86_64.tar.gz; install it with tar -xzf kinema-<v>-freebsd-x86_64.tar.gz --strip-components 1 -C /usr/local. The build needs the packages listed in the job (winit/wgpu, GTK 3 for the file dialogs, fontconfig, and alsa-lib for audio through cpal). .github/workflows/freebsd.yml builds and packages the same way nightly, so a FreeBSD break shows up before a release. package.sh --dry-run checks the tree's layout with stub binaries on any OS (packaging-lint runs it).

Web

The web job builds apps/kinema-web with cargo xtask web (the wasm-bindgen CLI must match the crate's version exactly, WASM_BINDGEN in xtask/src/main.rs) and zips the static site with packaging/web/package.sh. packaging/web/README.md covers hosting.

The draft release

The last job waits for every build, downloads their artifacts, writes SHA256SUMS.txt and creates the draft Kinema v<version> with notes generated from the merged pull requests. If the draft already exists, it replaces its assets and keeps it a draft. If that version is already published, the job fails and asks for a version bump (cargo xtask version set).

Secrets

The macOS, Windows and draft-release jobs run in the release environment, which only the release branch can use and which holds the signing secrets. The other jobs sign nothing and get no secrets. Every secret is optional: a missing one produces unsigned artifacts and a warning, never a failed build.