The seed-drift guard shipped as refuse-boot: the backend exited when
BACKEND_DICT_VERSION disagreed with the flat dir's recorded .seed_version. On
the test contour that turned a harmless-in-intent action — bumping the
TEST_DICT_VERSION variable to the active release (v1.2.1) on a volume seeded as
v1.0.0 — into a crash loop, because DICT_VERSION is the *seed* of a fresh
volume, not the active version (which the admin console drives).
Make the marker authoritative instead: OpenWithVersions resolves the flat dir's
version from .seed_version when present and ignores bootVersion on an
already-seeded volume; bootVersion only seeds a fresh volume's marker. So a
bumped build seed on a live volume is a no-op (it can't relabel live bytes and
can't void games pinned to the prior label), and it correctly seeds the next
fresh volume. The subdirectory scan now skips the resolved seed, so a version
also present as a subdir (e.g. v1.2.1 uploaded via the console while the build
seed is bumped to v1.2.1) is still loaded rather than shadowed by the flat bytes.
Tests: marker-wins over a bumped boot version; a bumped boot keeps the matching
subdir resident (the live-contour case). Docs updated (ARCHITECTURE §5, READMEs,
compose/.env, PRERELEASE DV) from "refuses to boot" to "marker wins / ignored".
Verified locally against v1.2.1: gofmt, build, vet, unit, integration green.
The dictionary release moved to v1.2.1 while DICT_VERSION stayed pinned at
v1.0.0 in CI and the image/compose seed defaults. Two problems:
1. CI validated against a stale dictionary.
2. The contour seed could be bumped on a live volume, which silently relabels
the already-seeded bytes — voiding games pinned to the prior label and
serving the wrong dictionary for new ones. The flat DAWGs carry no embedded
version, so this drift was undetectable.
Changes:
- Seed-drift guard: OpenWithVersions records the flat dir's version in a
.seed_version marker on first boot and refuses to start when a later
BACKEND_DICT_VERSION disagrees. DICT_VERSION is now the seed for a *fresh*
volume only; a live contour migrates through the admin console (old versions
stay resident, in-progress games keep replaying).
- Track the current release: CI's DICT_VERSION centralised to one workflow-level
env (v1.2.1); image/compose/.env seed defaults bumped to v1.2.1. The deploy
job keeps reading the per-contour vars.TEST_DICT_VERSION.
- Docs: ARCHITECTURE §5 (decision record), backend/deploy READMEs, PRERELEASE
tracker (DV row).
Verified locally against the v1.2.1 artifact: gofmt, build, vet, unit and
integration (-tags=integration) all green.
Ilia Denisov