Canary Release Workflow

Quick Reference

  • Workflow file: .github/workflows/canary.yml
  • Workflow name: Canary Release
  • Triggers: push (Canary), workflow_dispatch
  • Runner: windows-2025-vs2026
  • Permissions: contents: read
  • Environment: production

Overview

The canary.yml workflow builds and publishes canary packages from the Canary branch.

  • Workflow file: .github/workflows/canary.yml
  • Workflow name: Canary Release
  • Runner: windows-2025-vs2026
  • Environment: production

Purpose

  • Produce and publish canary NuGet packages for early validation.
  • Run as a standalone canary pipeline separate from release.yml's release-canary job.

Triggers

  • push to branch Canary
  • workflow_dispatch (manual run)

Safety Controls

Kill switch

Variable: CANARY_DISABLED

  • true -> workflow warns and all subsequent guarded steps are skipped.
  • false/unset -> workflow proceeds.

Security checks

The workflow explicitly verifies:

  • repository is Krypton-Suite/Standard-Toolkit
  • GITHUB_REF is refs/heads/Canary

Manual runs must be launched on branch Canary.

Toolchain Setup

The workflow installs:

  • .NET 9 / 10
  • .NET 11 stable attempt (fallback to preview setup if needed)
  • optional preview SDK (DOTNET_PREVIEW_SETUP_VERSION) when USE_DOTNET_PREVIEW != 'false'

Then it pins global.json to a resolved SDK version using:

  • DOTNET_PREVIEW_SDK_BAND (preview path), or
  • stable fallback order (11 -> 10 -> 9)

Build and Pack

Build orchestration uses:

  • Scripts/Build/canary.proj

Targets:

  • Restore
  • Build
  • Pack

with Configuration=Canary and UseArtifactsOutput=true.

Additional Pre-Build Step

Populate WebView2 (Preview) downloads/extracts WebView2 package content and copies required DLLs into:

  • Source/Krypton Components/Krypton.Toolkit.Utilities/Lib/WebView2

This ensures required binaries are present for canary build/package flow.

Publishing

NuGet push step behavior:

  • Looks for packages in:
    • artifacts/packages/Canary/*.nupkg
    • Bin/Packages/Canary/*.nupkg
  • Uses dotnet nuget push --skip-duplicate
  • Applies size gate from Scripts/CI/StandardToolkitNupkgGuard.ps1
  • Tracks whether any package was newly published

Required secret for publish:

  • NUGET_API_KEY

Notifications

When packages were newly published, the workflow posts a Discord embed to:

  • DISCORD_WEBHOOK_CANARY

The embed includes version, a linked commit SHA for the Canary checkout, package links, target frameworks, and changelog. The title also links to that commit.

If webhook is missing, notification is skipped with warning.

Concurrency

Concurrency group:

  • canary-alpha

with cancel-in-progress: true to avoid overlapping runs in that group.

Troubleshooting

Workflow exits on branch verification

Check:

  • run was triggered from Canary branch (case-sensitive in current workflow)

No packages published

Check:

  • NUGET_API_KEY configured
  • version increment/publish duplication behavior (--skip-duplicate)
  • package size guard thresholds (STANDARD_TOOLKIT_MIN_NUPKG_MB)

Discord notification not sent

Check:

  • packages_published == True
  • DISCORD_WEBHOOK_CANARY is configured and valid