fix(upgrade): force-quote releaseDate in updater yml and tolerate Date payloads

[zerob13]

Problem

Auto-update breaks for existing clients (v1.0.3-beta.5 ~ v1.1.0-beta.5) when checking for v1.1.0-beta.6:

[ { "expected": "string", "code": "invalid_type", "path": [ "info", "releaseDate" ], "message": "Invalid input: expected string, received Date" } ]

Root Cause

#2012 introduced scripts/ci/assemble-release.mjs to re-assemble updater yml files (latest*.yml). It serializes with the yaml package (eemeli/yaml), which does not quote an ISO timestamp string. Previously electron-builder published yml directly via js-yaml, which quotes ISO timestamps.

                releaseDate output      parser          result
beta.1..beta.4  js-yaml dump  '...Z'    js-yaml load    String ✓
beta.6          yaml stringify ...Z     js-yaml load    Date   ✗

electron-updater parses the yml with js-yaml, which turns an unquoted ISO releaseDate into a Date. The typed-IPC zod contract requires releaseDate: z.string(), so .parse() throws synchronously inside the update-available handler — blocking auto-download for all affected clients.

CI self-validation did not catch this: it also uses the yaml package, whose parser returns String for unquoted ISO (unlike js-yaml).

Fix — three layers of defense

1. Publish pipeline (scripts/ci/assemble-release.mjs): force-quote releaseDate via Scalar + QUOTE_SINGLE so js-yaml round-trips it as a string. Protects all existing clients.
2. Client normalize (src/main/upgrade/index.ts): toVersionInfo coerces a Date back to ISO string before emitting, so a legacy yml artifact can never leak a Date into the IPC payload.
3. Contract tolerance (src/shared/contracts/events/upgrade.events.ts): releaseDate schema accepts string | Date and transforms Date to ISO string. Final backstop against future regressions.

Validation

• typecheck:node + typecheck:web pass
• test/main/upgrade (8) + test/main/scripts/releaseAssembly (9) pass
• lint, format:check, i18n clean

Release ops

1. Revert/retract v1.1.0-beta.6
2. Merge this PR
3. Republish (beta.7 or re-issued beta.6) — new latest*.yml will carry quoted releaseDate
4. Affected clients resume auto-update without any client-side change

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes

  • Fixed release dates being misinterpreted during update processing.
  • Ensured release dates remain consistently formatted as ISO strings in upgrade information and status events.

• Tests

  • Added coverage for update notifications containing date-formatted release dates.

[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: defaults

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: 36bd27c8-5fd7-4964-bb31-e5ff0068731c

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between fd7eb9f and 7313e26.

📒 Files selected for processing (4)

• scripts/ci/assemble-release.mjs
• src/main/upgrade/index.ts
• src/shared/contracts/events/upgrade.events.ts
• test/main/upgrade/upgradeService.test.ts

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Release assembly preserves string release dates during YAML serialization, while upgrade event contracts and version mapping normalize Date values to ISO strings. A unit test verifies the emitted upgrade status payload.

Changes

Release date normalization

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Release metadata serialization scripts/ci/assemble-release.mjs	Release metadata is copied before writing, and string releaseDate values are wrapped in single-quoted YAML scalars.
Upgrade event normalization src/shared/contracts/events/upgrade.events.ts, src/main/upgrade/index.ts, test/main/upgrade/upgradeService.test.ts	Upgrade schemas and version mapping convert Date release dates to ISO strings, with a test covering the emitted status event.

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~20 minutes

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly describes the main fix: quoting releaseDate in updater YAML and handling Date payloads.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

✨ Finishing Touches

📝 Generate docstrings

• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch fix/updater-release-date

Warning

There were issues while running some tools. Please review the errors and either fix the tool's configuration or disable the tool if it's a critical failure.

🔧 Biome (2.5.3)

src/main/upgrade/index.ts

File contains syntax errors that prevent linting: Line 439: Catch clause variable type annotation must be 'any' or 'unknown' if specified.; Line 513: Catch clause variable type annotation must be 'any' or 'unknown' if specified.

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