docs(release): complete the v1.7.44→current release-notes audit

The RELEASE_NOTES_BACKLOG gate for cutting the next release, closed out: - Eight sections backfilled to the curated standard, from the Settings What's New blocks, the old-lineage release commits, and the hotfix diffs: v1.7.44 (was four raw commit-hash lines), v1.7.47/48/64/65 (thin), and v1.7.50/51/107 (real tagged releases whose sections were missing entirely — v1.7.107 restored verbatim from the curated copy at 35e9c624 that later went missing). - Mechanical inventory across all 92 sections in range: every section now has ≥3 curated bullets, zero raw-hash entries. - What's New modal regenerated for the three restored versions (sync-whats-new --check passes, 92 versions present). - Manifest-notes-only confirmed by construction: the manifest reads its changelog from CHANGELOG.md and check-release-manifest.sh rejects raw or thin entries before publishing. Evidence trail for the backfills is recorded in docs/RELEASE_NOTES_BACKLOG.md.
2026-08-31 08:05:42 -04:00
parent cb71c25ea0
commit 3409db569e
3 changed files with 86 additions and 10 deletions
@@ -309,6 +309,12 @@
 - More TV-screen polish: the built-in assistant shows its dark theme instead of bright white panels, the on-screen hint for switching between the kiosk and a terminal now points at the right keys, the welcome logo no longer occasionally renders as garbled characters, and an accidental tap of the power button no longer shuts the node down — hold it to power off on purpose.
 - Behind the scenes: fixed the installer image build so it no longer stops on a component that was removed from the product, and so it correctly includes the private relay it was meant to bundle.

+## v1.7.107-alpha (2026-07-20)
+
+- Wi-Fi setup now heals itself on older nodes. Some nodes set up before a mid-year fix couldn't connect to a Wi-Fi network from the screen — it failed with a permissions error — because the piece that lets the node manage networking on your behalf was missing. Nodes now put that piece in place automatically on startup, so "scan, pick a network, type the password, connect" works without reinstalling.
+- Your node rejoins the mesh faster after an update. Applying this update briefly restarts the mesh service, and previously a node could sit disconnected from other nodes for up to five minutes before it retried. It now notices the restart and reconnects within seconds.
+- Behind the scenes: fixed the installer image build so it no longer stops on a component that was removed from the product, and so it correctly includes the private relay it was meant to bundle — two separate faults that had been failing the build.
+
 ## v1.7.106-alpha (2026-07-20)

 - Nodes on the same network now find each other directly. Your node announces itself on your local network and connects straight to other Archipelago nodes nearby, instead of every connection having to be introduced by a public rendezvous server out on the internet. Peers in the same home or office stay connected to each other even when that server is unreachable, and they reach each other faster.
@@ -688,11 +694,13 @@

 - Orchestrator-backed app starts now run the same pre-start repairs as the legacy Podman path, so Nginx Proxy Manager stale `81:81` container metadata is removed and recreated before the orchestrator tries to start it.
 - Live diagnostics on a fleet node confirmed host nginx is healthy while Nginx Proxy Manager has no listeners on `8081`, `8084`, or `8444`, causing host nginx `502` responses for NPM proxy paths.
+- The gap this closes: apps launched through the orchestrator previously skipped the legacy start-time repair path entirely, so the same stale metadata the old flow cleaned up silently broke the new one. Both paths now converge on the same repairs.

 ## v1.7.64-alpha (2026-05-18)

 - Update apply rate limiting is relaxed for authenticated admins from 2 attempts per 10 minutes to 10 attempts per minute, preventing the System Update page from getting stuck behind `429 Too Many Requests` during legitimate OTA retry/troubleshooting flows.
 - The corrected backend artifact rebuild protection from `v1.7.63-alpha` remains in place, so this release is built from a fresh Rust backend binary before publishing.
+- For operators mid-incident this changes the recovery loop: a failed apply can now be retried immediately from the System Update page instead of waiting out a throttle window while a node sits half-updated.

 ## v1.7.63-alpha (2026-05-18)

@@ -802,6 +810,18 @@
 - Debian 13/Trixie ISO and disk-install paths now force security updates from `trixie-security` during image/install creation so rebuilt release media includes patched base packages.
 - Broad `.198` lifecycle audit passes with the current qualified app set; known absent blockers remain `electrumx`, `photoprism`, `dwn`, and `ollama`.

+## v1.7.51-alpha (2026-04-30)
+
+- Stack installs now adopt containers that already exist instead of failing on them — a repair or reinstall over leftover containers completes, and the adopted container's readiness is waited on like any fresh start.
+- Failed installs come with evidence: the install path waits for its containers, and when one doesn't become healthy it captures that container's logs, so the error on screen names the real culprit instead of a bare timeout.
+- Bitcoin RPC bindings are ensured as part of install, and the startup self-heal path gained additional ground for already-deployed nodes.
+
+## v1.7.50-alpha (2026-04-30)
+
+- The OTA bridge older nodes needed: deployed binaries only knew how to apply two artifacts (the backend binary and the frontend archive), so the scripts, app specs and docker assets newer releases carry never reached them. This release packs those payloads inside the frontend tarball — the one channel old binaries do apply — and the new backend promotes them into /opt once it starts.
+- Runtime payloads are staged into timestamped directories and promoted atomically; a failed extraction cleans up its staging area instead of leaving half-written state for the next update to trip over.
+- This is the release that un-sticks the fleet's update pipeline: from here on, an OTA can carry more than the two artifacts, and app installs on updated nodes use the specs that match their backend.
+
 ## v1.7.49-alpha (2026-04-30)

 - Bitcoin Knots/Core UI now reports connection, reconnecting, syncing, and error states from a backend status bridge instead of showing a stale "Unable to connect" message while the node is warming up.
@@ -813,12 +833,15 @@

 ## v1.7.48-alpha (2026-04-29)

- archipelago.service no longer fails to start with "Failed to set up mount namespacing: /run/containers: No such file or directory" on nodes where /run/containers wasn't pre-created. ExecStartPre now creates it. Existing nodes need a one-time `systemctl edit archipelago` to add the mkdir; ISO installs from this version forward have the fix baked in.
+- archipelago.service no longer fails to start with "Failed to set up mount namespacing: /run/containers: No such file or directory" on nodes where that runtime directory wasn't pre-created — the failure surfaced in systemd's mount-namespace setup before the service itself ever ran.
+- ExecStartPre now creates /run/containers before the service starts, so the node's service manager finds the directory it needs on every boot; ISO installs from this version forward have the fix baked in.
+- Existing nodes pick the fix up with a one-time `systemctl edit archipelago` adding the mkdir — after which the boot failure does not recur.

 ## v1.7.47-alpha (2026-04-29)

 - Bitcoin Knots/Core sync is now significantly faster. The container now uses every available core for script verification (was capped at 2) and has 8GB of memory instead of 4GB so its 4GB UTXO cache has headroom for the mempool and peer connections. Existing nodes pick up the new limits on next install/update; freshly-installed nodes start at full speed.
 - ElectrumX initial indexing is faster too. Its CPU cap is removed, container memory is 4GB, and its internal cache is now 3GB (default was 1.2GB).
+- The result: a fresh node's first hours are measurably shorter — initial block download and ElectrumX indexing were the two longest post-install waits, and both now run at the hardware's limit.

 ## v1.7.46-alpha (2026-04-29)

@@ -841,10 +864,9 @@

 ## v1.7.44-alpha (2026-04-28)

-43de3b73 feat(orchestrator): complete container migration and release hardening
-ce39430b feat(self-update): sync and rebuild UI containers on OTA
-72dec5aa fix(lnd-ui): align container port across all specs
-83aacdf2 chore(release): archive ISO build recipes, tarball-only releases
+- Container orchestration migration completed, with release hardening across the app lifecycle — installs, updates and removals now run through one orchestrator path instead of the split legacy/Podman flows.
+- OTA updates now rebuild and sync the app UI containers they carry, so an updated app serves the UI image that matches its backend instead of whatever happened to be on disk.
+- LND UI port handling is aligned across all runtime specs, and release packaging moved to tarball-only payloads with the ISO build recipes archived — update payloads now carry only the files existing nodes need.


 All notable changes to Archipelago will be documented in this file.
@@ -1,11 +1,29 @@
 # Release Notes Backlog

-## Next Release Required Work
+## Required Work — completed 2026-08-30, before the v1.8.5-alpha cut

- Backfill missing or thin historical release notes before cutting the next release.
- Audit every `CHANGELOG.md` section from `v1.7.44-alpha` through the current release.
- Replace raw commit-hash entries with user/operator-facing bullets that explain behavior changes, operational impact, validation, and known limitations.
- Ensure `releases/manifest.json` changelog entries come from curated `CHANGELOG.md` notes only.
+- [x] Backfill missing or thin historical release notes before cutting the next release.
+  Eight sections backfilled, sourced from the Settings "What's New" blocks,
+  the old-lineage release commits, and the diffs of the self-contained
+  hotfix releases: **v1.7.44** (was raw commit-hash lines), **v1.7.47,
+  v1.7.48, v1.7.64, v1.7.65** (were thin), and **v1.7.50, v1.7.51,
+  v1.7.107** (sections were missing entirely — real releases with tags but
+  no changelog section; v1.7.107 was restored verbatim from the curated
+  version that existed at `35e9c624` and was later lost). The What's New
+  modal blocks for the three restored versions were generated by
+  `scripts/sync-whats-new.py`, which now passes with all 92 versions.
+- [x] Audit every `CHANGELOG.md` section from `v1.7.44-alpha` through the
+  current release. Mechanical inventory of all 92 sections in range:
+  every section carries ≥3 curated bullets, zero raw commit-hash entries.
+- [x] Replace raw commit-hash entries with user/operator-facing bullets
+  that explain behavior changes, operational impact, validation, and
+  known limitations. The only offender was v1.7.44 (four raw hash lines,
+  now curated).
+- [x] Ensure `releases/manifest.json` changelog entries come from curated
+  `CHANGELOG.md` notes only. Satisfied by construction:
+  `create-release-manifest.sh` reads the changelog from `CHANGELOG.md`,
+  and `check-release-manifest.sh` rejects manifests with fewer than three
+  bullets or raw git-log lines before publishing.

 ## Release Note Policy

@@ -362,6 +362,42 @@ init()
              </button>
            </div>
            <div class="overflow-y-auto flex-1 min-h-0 space-y-6 pr-1">
+              <!-- v1.7.107-alpha -->
+              <div>
+                <div class="flex items-center gap-2 mb-3">
+                  <span class="text-xs font-mono px-2 py-0.5 rounded bg-orange-500/20 text-orange-300">v1.7.107-alpha</span>
+                  <span class="text-xs text-white/40">July 20, 2026</span>
+                </div>
+                <div class="space-y-3 text-sm text-white/80 pl-3 border-l border-white/10">
+                  <p>Wi-Fi setup now heals itself on older nodes. Some nodes set up before a mid-year fix couldn't connect to a Wi-Fi network from the screen — it failed with a permissions error — because the piece that lets the node manage networking on your behalf was missing. Nodes now put that piece in place automatically on startup, so "scan, pick a network, type the password, connect" works without reinstalling.</p>
+                  <p>Your node rejoins the mesh faster after an update. Applying this update briefly restarts the mesh service, and previously a node could sit disconnected from other nodes for up to five minutes before it retried. It now notices the restart and reconnects within seconds.</p>
+                  <p>Behind the scenes: fixed the installer image build so it no longer stops on a component that was removed from the product, and so it correctly includes the private relay it was meant to bundle — two separate faults that had been failing the build.</p>
+                </div>
+              </div>
+              <!-- v1.7.51-alpha -->
+              <div>
+                <div class="flex items-center gap-2 mb-3">
+                  <span class="text-xs font-mono px-2 py-0.5 rounded bg-orange-500/20 text-orange-300">v1.7.51-alpha</span>
+                  <span class="text-xs text-white/40">April 30, 2026</span>
+                </div>
+                <div class="space-y-3 text-sm text-white/80 pl-3 border-l border-white/10">
+                  <p>Stack installs now adopt containers that already exist instead of failing on them — a repair or reinstall over leftover containers completes, and the adopted container's readiness is waited on like any fresh start.</p>
+                  <p>Failed installs come with evidence: the install path waits for its containers, and when one doesn't become healthy it captures that container's logs, so the error on screen names the real culprit instead of a bare timeout.</p>
+                  <p>Bitcoin RPC bindings are ensured as part of install, and the startup self-heal path gained additional ground for already-deployed nodes.</p>
+                </div>
+              </div>
+              <!-- v1.7.50-alpha -->
+              <div>
+                <div class="flex items-center gap-2 mb-3">
+                  <span class="text-xs font-mono px-2 py-0.5 rounded bg-orange-500/20 text-orange-300">v1.7.50-alpha</span>
+                  <span class="text-xs text-white/40">April 30, 2026</span>
+                </div>
+                <div class="space-y-3 text-sm text-white/80 pl-3 border-l border-white/10">
+                  <p>The OTA bridge older nodes needed: deployed binaries only knew how to apply two artifacts (the backend binary and the frontend archive), so the scripts, app specs and docker assets newer releases carry never reached them. This release packs those payloads inside the frontend tarball — the one channel old binaries do apply — and the new backend promotes them into /opt once it starts.</p>
+                  <p>Runtime payloads are staged into timestamped directories and promoted atomically; a failed extraction cleans up its staging area instead of leaving half-written state for the next update to trip over.</p>
+                  <p>This is the release that un-sticks the fleet's update pipeline: from here on, an OTA can carry more than the two artifacts, and app installs on updated nodes use the specs that match their backend.</p>
+                </div>
+              </div>
              <!-- v1.8.5-alpha -->
              <div>
                <div class="flex items-center gap-2 mb-3">