335. The showcase is a package, and example.yml is folded in

Date: 2026-09-17

Status

Accepted, then superseded the same day by ADR-0340: the GitHub Packages publication and the jlink image are gone, and the example’s tests run on linux.yml’s verify leg. What survives of this record is that example.yml stays retired. Extends ADR-0048; retires the workflow ADR-0021 and ADR-0023 describe.

Context

showcase.yml builds a runnable image on each desktop platform — a jlink’d JDK, the modules, libgoldberry and a launcher (ADR-0048) — runs it until it has presented three frames, and uploads it as a run artifact. Run artifacts expire after ninety days, need a GitHub login to download, and have no stable address: there was no link to “the current showcase”.

example.yml predates the image. It builds libgoldberry on an Ubuntu runner, runs ./gradlew :example:build — the example’s goldens and screen tests, which need a real rasterizer and skip in linux.yml’s java job — and then ./gradlew :example:run under Xvfb until three frames are presented. Its header gives two reasons to exist: the module path, and the reflective binding exercised as a real module (ADR-0155).

Both reasons are now met more strictly by showcase.yml’s Linux leg: the image is a module-path launch, with nothing on it jlink did not keep, and the same three-frame assertion. The one thing example.yml did that nothing else did is run the example’s tests against a built library.

Decision

The images are published to GitHub Packages as a Maven artifact, io.github.digitalsmile:goldberry-showcase:<version>, one classifier per target:

A final publish job in showcase.yml runs on pushes only — master publishes a snapshot, a v* tag the release, with the version resolved as ADR-0333 says — downloads the three archives and uploads them in one Gradle call, :example:publishShowcasePublicationToGithubPackagesRepository, with the job’s GITHUB_TOKEN and packages: write. Once, not per leg, for ADR-0334’s metadata reason. ShowcasePackage owns the target list and the tar-versus-zip rule, and its test holds the workflow’s matrix and file names to it.

example/build.gradle declares the publication only when -Pgoldberry.showcaseDir is given, and no longer disables PublishToMavenRepository — that blanket switch-off would have made the upload report SKIPPED in a green run.

example.yml is deleted. Its :example:build step moves into showcase.yml’s Linux leg, after the library is built. LinuxDependenciesTest now guards showcase.yml alone, and PublishWorkflowsTest fails if example.yml returns.

Alternatives considered

• GitHub Releases for the images. Public, unauthenticated downloads, which Packages is not — but only for tags. A master build has no release to attach to short of a rolling nightly release rewritten on every push. Worth adding for tagged releases later; it does not replace a snapshot address.
• An OCI artifact on ghcr.io through ORAS. Anonymous pulls for public packages, but a user needs oras to fetch a zip, and nothing else in this build speaks OCI.
• Maven Central. An application image with a bundled JDK is not a library, and Central’s validation expects javadoc and sources for every artifact.
• Keep example.yml. It would duplicate the Linux leg’s native build — the slowest step in either workflow — to run a launch the image already runs more strictly.

Consequences

• GitHub Packages’ Maven registry needs authentication to download, even from a public repository: a personal access token with read:packages. The images are an address for people with a GitHub account, not for everyone.
• Snapshot uploads accumulate: every push to master adds three images, each a trimmed JDK. GitHub does not prune Maven snapshots on its own; old files have to be deleted, by hand or by a scheduled actions/delete-package-versions, which is not written.
• The release images go to Packages from showcase.yml, not from release.yml — a tag triggers both, independently, so a release can reach Central while its showcase failed, or the reverse.
• The example’s tests still run on Linux only, as they did.
• The README loses its Example badge.