v1.2.0-rc.1

Hephaestus v1.2.0-rc.1

Release candidate of v1.2.0. The GitHub Action no longer compiles
Hephaestus: it installs the release binary that belongs to the commit you
pinned, verified by its checksum and its provenance attestation, and leaves
your toolchain alone. This release also brings hephaestus publish, and the
fixes prepared for v1.1.1 (never released).

The Action runs the verified release binary

- uses: magicdrive/hephaestus@<full commit SHA of v1.2.0> # v1.2.0

Before your build runs, the Action:

1. reads the release named in action/VERSION of the pinned commit; the
   release workflow refuses a tag that this file does not name;
2. downloads hephaestus_<version>_<os>_<arch>.tar.gz (.zip on Windows)
   and hephaestus_checksums.txt, from that release only;
3. checks the archive's SHA-256;
4. verifies the archive's provenance attestation (gh attestation verify).
   It must have been signed by magicdrive/hephaestus's release.yml on a
   GitHub-hosted runner, for the release tag and, when pinned by SHA, for
   exactly the pinned commit;
5. extracts only the regular file hephaestus[.exe] at the archive root,
   and checks that it reports the expected version.

Any failure stops the Action. It never falls back to building from source.

As a result:

• No toolchain is involved. Nothing is compiled, no Go is downloaded or
  set up, and nothing is written to $GITHUB_PATH or $GITHUB_ENV. Your
  build commands use the toolchain your workflow set up. A runner without Go
  can run the Action for a project in any language.
• The binary is bound to your pin. The attestation proves that the
  binary was built by Hephaestus's release workflow from the commit you
  pinned.
• Supported platforms are unchanged: Linux, macOS and Windows, on x64
  and ARM64. A runner needs bash, curl, tar and gh, which
  GitHub-hosted runners have.

Reference the Action by a release. Use the full SHA of a release tag's
commit (recommended) or the tag itself. A branch such as @main now fails,
because no release binary belongs to it.

hephaestus publish

The tool that releases Hephaestus is now a command for any project:
make publish vX.Y.Z that runs hephaestus publish. In order, it:

1. checks that the release can be made: branch, clean worktree, in sync
   with origin, the tag unused, CI green on the commit, rulesets, the
   release environment, the tap, and the generic preflight;
2. asks for confirmation;
3. pushes an annotated tag;
4. follows the release workflow;
5. verifies the release: assets, checksums, attestations and the tap pull
   request.

See docs/publish.md.

The Action gains command: plan, with the outputs prerelease and tap.
The steps that use the tap token can then run only when the tap is
published. A prerelease never even receives the token.

Fixes (prepared for v1.1.1)

• The Action no longer changes your Go toolchain. v1.1.0 put its own Go
  first on PATH and exported GOTOOLCHAIN=local, so your Go modules were
  built with Go 1.26.0, or failed to build.
• PWD is no longer redacted as a credential. Paths under the current
  directory are no longer printed as ***. A value matched only by its
  variable's name is not redacted when it is the path of an existing file or
  directory. Known tokens are always redacted.
• --fresh removes the previous run's outputs (archives, checksum files
  and formulae) from dist, if they are unchanged and Hephaestus wrote them.

Compatibility

• Unchanged: configuration, CLI flags, Action inputs and outputs, JSON
  fields and check IDs. New: the publish command, and the Action's plan command with the outputs prerelease and tap.
• The Action: it must be referenced by a release tag or that tag's
  commit, and it no longer provides Go. Set up your own Go, as the examples
  always did.
• Template variables: {{ .Env.PWD }} and {{ .Env.OLDPWD }} are now
  visible to templates.

Known limitations

• Homebrew 4.6 parses the version of archive URLs such as
  tool_1.2.3_darwin_arm64.tar.gz as 64; Homebrew 7.0 parses it
  correctly. brew update updates Homebrew itself.
• hephaestus check shows the tap pull request branch as a template;
  hephaestus preflight --tag renders it.

Full Changelog: v1.1.0...v1.2.0-rc.1