feat: Enable alpha release channel support

[jeanfbrito]

Summary

• Add semver check to prevent showing "downgrades" as updates
• Mark prerelease versions (alpha/beta) as prerelease on GitHub releases
• Change development branch from develop to dev in workflows
• Add scripts/release-tag.ts for creating release tags interactively
• Add alpha release process documentation

Test plan

• Verify lint passes
• Verify tests pass
• After merge, update version to 4.12.0-alpha.1 and test the alpha release workflow

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes

  • Prevents accidental downgrades by blocking updates to older app versions.

• Documentation

  • Added an Alpha Release Process guide covering channels, versioning, opt-in methods, and troubleshooting.

• Chores

  • CI/CD workflows updated to use the new dev branch.
  • Improved release automation: automated tagging script and prerelease-aware release publishing.
  • Package version bumped for upcoming alpha release.

_{✏️ Tip: You can customize this high-level summary in your review settings.}

[coderabbitai]

Walkthrough

Branch triggers updated from develop to dev in CI; added a release-tag CLI script; prerelease flag wired into GitHub releases; added a downgrade guard to update handling; added alpha-release docs; added /scripts to .eslintignore.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Summary
CI/CD Workflow Branch Updates ​.github/workflows/build-release.yml, ​.github/workflows/powershell-lint.yml, ​.github/workflows/pull-request-build.yml, ​.github/workflows/validate-pr.yml	Replaced develop with dev in push/pull_request triggers and branch detection/log messages.
Lint Configuration .eslintignore	Added /scripts to ignore list with explanatory comments for utility scripts.
Release Automation Script scripts/release-tag.ts	New CLI script: reads package.json version, validates SemVer, derives release channel, checks remote tags, prompts user, creates/pushes git tag, and optionally triggers workflows; includes robust error handling.
Update Safety src/updates/main.ts	Added semver.gt downgrade guard in update-available handler; dispatches UPDATES_NEW_VERSION_NOT_AVAILABLE when incoming version is not greater.
Release Metadata Handling workspaces/desktop-release-action/src/github.ts	Compute isPrerelease from SemVer prerelease field and pass prerelease flag to GitHub release create/update calls.
Development Branch Detection workspaces/desktop-release-action/src/index.ts	Switched branch detection/logging from develop to dev in release action flow.
Docs: Alpha Release Process docs/alpha-release-process.md	New documentation describing Alpha channel workflow, steps to create Alpha releases, opt-in/update behavior, versioning rules, and troubleshooting.
Metadata & Version Bumps electron-builder.json, package.json	Incremented mac bundleVersion and bumped package version to 4.12.0-alpha.1; minor formatting changes in linux deb lists.

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant Dev as Developer (local)
  participant Script as release-tag.ts
  participant Git as Git (local/remote)
  participant GH as GitHub (Actions & Releases)

  Dev->>Script: run release-tag.ts
  Script->>Script: read package.json, parse SemVer, determine channel
  Script->>Git: fetch remote tags
  Git-->>Script: remote tags list
  Script->>Script: check for existing tag & compare versions
  Script->>Dev: prompt confirm create & push tag
  Dev-->>Script: confirm
  Script->>Git: git tag & git push origin tag
  Git-->>Script: push success
  Script->>GH: pushed tag triggers Actions & Releases (prerelease set from SemVer)
  GH-->>Script: workflow & release responses

Loading

Estimated code review effort

🎯 3 (Moderate) | ⏱️ ~30 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• chore: Upgrade Electron and Node.js versions, update README and packa… #3179: Modifies electron-builder.json and updates package version—overlaps on bundle/version edits.
• chore: Enable alpha releases #3180: Implements same code-level changes (semver downgrade guard, prerelease wiring, release-tag script, alpha docs, CI branch rename).

Suggested labels

build-artifacts

Poem

🐰 I hopped through tags and versioned trails,

Pushed a tag that makes the CI sail,
Alpha notes and prerelease cheer,
Dev branch set, downgrade guards near,
I nibble bugs and nibble rails.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 3

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The PR title 'feat: Enable alpha release channel support' accurately captures the main objective of enabling alpha release functionality across multiple workflow and configuration files.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

_{✏️ Tip: You can configure your own custom pre-merge checks in the settings.}

✨ Finishing touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Post copyable unit tests in a comment
• Commit unit tests in branch test/electron-40-alpha-releases

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[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 1

Caution

Some comments are outside the diff and can’t be posted inline due to platform limitations.

⚠️ Outside diff range comments (1)

.github/workflows/build-release.yml (1)

12-14: Concurrency group may not work correctly for push events.

github.head_ref is only populated for pull_request events. For push events (which this workflow triggers on), it will be empty, causing all push-triggered builds to potentially share the same concurrency group and cancel each other unexpectedly.

Consider using a fallback:

🔧 Suggested fix

 concurrency:
-  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.head_ref }}
+  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.head_ref || github.ref }}
   cancel-in-progress: true

🤖 Fix all issues with AI agents

In `@scripts/release-tag.ts`:
- Around line 148-151: The git push command used in the push step is invalid
(`git push origin tag -- ${version.version}`); update the execSync call in
scripts/release-tag.ts (the block that logs "Pushing tag to origin..." and calls
execSync) to push the tag correctly by using `git push origin
${version.version}` or `git push origin refs/tags/${version.version}` so the tag
name is passed as the ref to push; keep the existing try/catch and stdio options
unchanged.

🧹 Nitpick comments (2)

.eslintignore (1)

4-6: Consider using a separate ESLint config for scripts instead of ignoring entirely.

While the rationale is clear (utility scripts with different patterns), completely ignoring /scripts from linting means type errors, unused variables, and other issues won't be caught. An alternative approach would be to create a separate .eslintrc in the /scripts directory with relaxed rules for the specific patterns (e.g., allowing console.log).

docs/alpha-release-process.md (1)

5-63: Add a simple flow diagram + architecture note for channel/update files.

The doc is clear, but it’s missing the required flow diagram and architecture explanation for the alpha-release mechanism (e.g., how alpha.yml/beta.yml/latest.yml map to channel selection and updater behavior). Consider adding a short Mermaid flow diagram and a brief “How it works” section. As per coding guidelines, please add these elements.