multirelease

"Main is the kitchen. Tags are the restaurant menu. The customer never sees the kitchen."

Work In Progress

multirelease is a proof of concept. The RFC defines the capabilities. The implementation is catching up.

What

multirelease is the publish-state creator — one of four tools in the multimod ecosystem. It transforms dev-state go.mod files into publish-state, creates a detached git commit, and tags it for release.

Zero knowledge of multimod. multirelease reads a JSON module map from stdin and a version string from arguments. It doesn't know how modules were discovered. It doesn't import multimod code. The JSON contract is the only interface.

How It Works

# Dry-run: show the plan, touch nothing
multimod modules | multirelease v1.2.3

# Local: create detached commit + tags on your machine
multimod modules | multirelease v1.2.3 --write

# CI: create + push
multimod modules | multirelease v1.2.3 --write --push

What happens with --write:

1. Tag current HEAD as v1.2.3-dev (traceability)
2. git checkout --detach (main is never touched)
3. Strip internal replace directives from all sub-module go.mod
4. Pin internal require versions to v1.2.3
5. Commit: chore(release): v1.2.3 [multirelease]
6. Tag: v1.2.3 (root) + otel/v1.2.3 (each sub)
7. git checkout main (return to dev-state)

Main never leaves dev-state. The publish-state commit is detached — accessible only via tag.

Three Levels of Trust

Mode	What happens	Who uses
(default)	Dry-run: show plan, touch nothing	Developer verification
--write	Local: detached commit + tags	Developer local testing
--write --push	Commit + tags + push to origin	CI pipeline

Input Contract

multirelease reads the Module Map JSON from stdin:

{
  "version": 1,
  "root": {"path": "github.com/example/project", "dir": "/abs/path"},
  "subs": [
    {"path": "github.com/example/project/otel", "dir": "/abs/path/otel",
     "requires": ["github.com/example/project"], "workspace_only": false}
  ]
}

Any tool that produces this JSON can drive multirelease. multimod modules is the default producer, but a jq script works too.

See Also

• multimod — the dev-state half of the ecosystem
• Pipe Ecosystem — how all four tools work together
• RFC-001 — the architectural source of truth
• FAQ — "Detached commits are bad practice!" and other angry questions