Release assets under assets/readme/examples/ drift — nothing regenerates them, and the deck stamps a raw SNAPSHOT

[DemchaAV]

Two problems that compound

1. Nothing regenerates the committed example assets

cut-release.ps1 refreshes web/showcase/** (Step 4, ShowcaseSync) and assets/readme/repository_showcase_render.png (Render-ReadmeBanner). It touches nothing under assets/readme/examples/**.

Those files are linked from examples/README.md and the root README, so a reader clicking through gets whatever was committed the day the example was added. assets/readme/examples/engine-deck.pdf is the visible case: it is still the v1.8.0 render, carrying the codename illustrative, two minors behind. It has not been regenerated since dcc62500.

2. The deck bakes a pre-release qualifier into a public asset

EngineDeckExample interpolates the raw VERSION in three places — the page title, the section header, and the footer on every slide:

.leftText("GraphCompose · v" + VERSION + " “" + CODENAME + "”")

The version pill is handled: versionBlock() strips the qualifier with VERSION.replaceFirst("-.*$", ""), with a comment explaining that 2.0.0-SNAPSHOT is too wide for the 96 pt pill. The other three sites got no such treatment, so a render taken on develop today produces:

GraphCompose · v2.1.0-SNAPSHOT “twinned”

So the two problems pull against each other: the asset is stale, and regenerating it at any moment other than during a cut publishes a -SNAPSHOT string to readers.

Suggested direction

• Strip the qualifier once, where VERSION is resolved, rather than at one of four use sites — the pill's replaceFirst then becomes redundant and can go. A deck should never display a build qualifier.
• Either add an assets/readme/examples/** refresh step to cut-release.ps1 (alongside Render-ReadmeBanner, which already solves the same problem for the hero), or drop the version and codename from the deck entirely so the asset stops being version-bound.
• If a refresh step lands, verify it under -DryRun, -PostReleaseOnly and -SkipShowcase — the v1.6.5 lesson was a release step that only worked in the default mode.

Related

• Decide whether a standard-14 face constant should resolve to the face it names #451 — the same deck is where fontName(HELVETICA_BOLD) renders regular.
• The 2.1 codename was corrected from navigable to twinned in the PR that filed this; the stale asset is what this issue tracks.

[DemchaAV]

The SNAPSHOT half of this is fixed; the drift half is not. Recording which is which, because the title covers both and the two are easy to confuse later.

Fixed in 35e853e (merged as dc854f0)

The decks no longer stamp a pre-release coordinate. Verified by decompressing the PDF content streams rather than by eye — the only version token in any of the four committed decks is now 2.1.1:

file	before	after
assets/readme/examples/engine-deck.pdf	2.1.1-SNAPSHOT in the every-page footer + metadata	2.1.1
assets/readme/examples/engine-deck-v2.pdf	2.1.1-SNAPSHOT on the hero pill + metadata	2.1.1
both web/showcase/pdf/flagships/default/ copies	same	2.1.1

The root cause was narrower than "the deck stamps a raw SNAPSHOT": the strip already existed, privately. EngineDeckExample open-coded replaceFirst("-.*$", "") for its version pill only, and interpolated the raw value into its footer and metadata; the v2 deck had its own version field and never inherited any of it. It is now ExampleVersion.withoutQualifier(), the v1 deck's duplicate banner.properties loader is gone, and every rendered site routes through the one accessor. ExampleVersionTest pins it — replacing the method body with current() turns two of its three tests red.

Worth noting how it got published: the decks were regenerated off-cycle, when the reactor version carries a qualifier. Before that they were only ever rendered during a cut, with the pom already at the release version — which is why the class of bug had never appeared.

Still open

Nothing regenerates assets/readme/examples/**. grep -c "assets/readme/examples" scripts/cut-release.ps1 returns 0 — the script's only asset step re-renders assets/readme/repository_showcase_render.png, and Step 6's staging allow-list names that one file plus web/showcase. The four decks above are correct today because they were fixed by hand, not because anything keeps them correct.

Overlaps with #461, which frames the same gap by its scale (1 of 82). Suggest keeping the mechanism discussion in one of the two rather than both.

[DemchaAV]

Closing as a duplicate of #461, which frames the same gap by its scale.

The two halves of this title land in different places, so for anyone arriving here later:

• The SNAPSHOT half is fixed — 35e853e, merged as dc854f0. All four committed decks now carry 2.1.1 and nothing else; verified by decompressing their content streams. The detail, including why the strip existed privately in one deck and never reached the other, is in the comment above and stays readable on this closed issue.
• The drift half continues in Committed README assets have no regeneration path — 1 of 82 is refreshed on release #461, together with the two findings that came out of the same pass: ShowcaseSync copies rather than renders and the release script never runs GenerateAllExamples, and EngineDeckV2Example is published but absent from the standard regeneration path.