flatcar
[RFE] ci-automation: Decouple OS version from build tag
Follow-up for https://github.com/flatcar-linux/Flatcar/issues/694
Current situation
The the CI pipeline assumes that the git tag mandates the OS version.
Impact
We have to create the release tags before starting a build. We can't, e.g., start a (nightly or manual) build with a release OS version from a dev/nightly git tag.
Ideal future situation
The OS version is decoupled from the git tag, allowing to tag the release after the build
Implementation options
The OS version could be an optional parameter when starting an SDK/packages build
Additional information
For a release build not only the right OS version is needed but it would also mean that the other logic sets things like the update-engine release key instead of the dev key.
One more consideration: Maybe we can skip creating the build git tag and support building from a branch or even a commit id.
To build from a branch would assume that the user doesn't rely on the CI to set up any submodule rerefences but does this in the branch manually. Having that would make it easier to iterate over a script fix in some later stage of the pipeline.
I moved this to the Upcoming queue again with the intention that we should first make a release with the new pipeline and then get more insights on what changes we want to have.
For the record, on Matrix we discussed a bit more and it could also be interesting to think about alternatives to writing the OS version into the version.txt in git (e.g., it could be written by the SDK container on the fly based on an env var or an existing git tag).