Selecting publishers

Run a tailored subset of publishers with the --publishers allowlist and the unified --skip denylist

Anodizer runs every configured publisher by default. Two flags narrow that set when you want a targeted release — --publishers (an allowlist) and --skip (a denylist). Both are available on release, publish, continue, and check config, and both accept the same publisher vocabulary, so a selection that works on one command works on all of them. continue resumes a stalled release through the same publish pipeline, so it validates and honors the selectors identically — a typo there is rejected before any publisher runs, the same one-way-door guard the other commands carry.

Allowlist vs denylist

Both flags are comma-separated and may be repeated:

anodizer release --publishers cargo,homebrew
anodizer release --publishers cargo --publishers homebrew   # equivalent
anodizer release --skip npm,dockerhub

Precedence: --skip always wins

When a publisher appears in both lists, --skip removes it. This makes the denylist a hard veto you can layer on top of an allowlist:

# Allow cargo + homebrew, but veto homebrew anyway → only cargo runs.
anodizer release --publishers cargo,homebrew --skip homebrew

Empty means "all configured"

Omitting both flags (or passing empty values) runs every configured publisher — the default release behavior is unchanged:

anodizer release           # every configured publisher runs

The valid publisher names

--publishers and --skip accept these publisher names (the canonical token for each publisher is its own name — anodizer derives the set from the publisher registry, so it never drifts):

A name in the yes rows resolves the same whether you reach it through --skip (which also accepts stage tokens) or --publishers. The publisher only names have no stage of their own, so before this selection surface the only way to gate them was per-block config — now they honor --skip/--publishers uniformly at dispatch time.

The last five names — blob, snapcraft-publish, docker, docker-sign, announce — are publish stages rather than dispatch publishers, but each performs an external, irreversible push (an object store, the Snap Store, an image registry, registry signatures, or — for announce — broadcasts to webhooks/Slack/Twitter/Mastodon/Bluesky). They are therefore governed by the same selectors: --publishers cargo deselects them, and --publishers blob allow-lists a blob-only upload. Like homebrew, announce depends on the release substrate (it reads the release URL) yet is itself a leaf, so the allowlist governs it just like the others. The one exception is the release stage that creates the GitHub/GitLab/Gitea release: it is the substrate every other publisher depends on (manifests reference its assets; announce needs the release URL), so it is governed by --skip=release only and is never dropped by a --publishers allowlist.

Canonical names: homebrew, not brew; chocolatey, not choco

The selection vocabulary uses each publisher's full name. The short forms are rejected with a loud error so a typo can never silently widen or narrow a release:

$ anodizer release --skip brew
Error: invalid --skip value(s): brew. Valid options: …, homebrew, …, chocolatey, …

$ anodizer release --publishers crates
Error: invalid --publishers value(s): crates. Valid publishers: cargo, …

Use homebrew, chocolatey, and cargo (the canonical names from the table above).

Artifact eligibility

The install-aggregator publishers — Homebrew formulae, Homebrew casks, nix, krew, npm, and aur — each package only the archives whose operating system they can actually install. anodizer selects those archives for you; you never list them by hand.

An aarch64-apple-ios build in your target list is fine — it still builds and uploads as a release asset. It is simply not folded into a Homebrew cask or an npm package, because those installers would target the wrong OS.

No eligible archive is a hard error, never a silent skip

If a configured install aggregator finds no archive it can install, anodizer fails the release rather than emitting an empty or wrong-OS artifact:

$ anodizer release
...
Error: aur: no linux archives matched filters for 'myapp' — PKGBUILD would have
placeholder URL and empty sha256. Check your archive configuration and aur
filters (ids=<none>, amd64_variant=<default v1>, arm_variant=7 [hardcoded]). At
least one linux Archive artifact must match.

This closes a failure-hiding gap where a misconfigured build (say, an aur block with only macOS targets configured) would otherwise ship an installable file that installs nothing or points at the wrong platform. Fix the target list or remove the publisher, then re-run. (On a sharded determinism build the check is per-shard — see Artifact validation and Determinism.)

Worked examples

Publish a single channel from a finished build

anodizer publish reuses artifacts already in dist/ and runs only the publish pipeline. Pair it with --publishers to release one channel without re-running the rest:

$ anodizer publish --publishers npm
   • publishing npm
   • skipped cargo — not in --publishers allowlist
   • skipped homebrew — not in --publishers allowlist
   …

Exclude one publisher from a full release

$ anodizer release --skip npm
   • skipped npm — excluded via --skip
   …    # every other configured publisher runs

Tailor a release to two publishers

$ anodizer release --publishers cargo,homebrew
   • publishing cargo
   • publishing homebrew
   • skipped npm — not in --publishers allowlist
   • skipped dockerhub — not in --publishers allowlist
   …

Two deselect outputs: the dispatch line and the summary line

A deselected publisher is never silent. anodizer emits the deselect line at two points in the run — in-flight (as the publish pipeline reaches the publisher) and again in the publish summary — with the same distinguished wording at both. The two outputs differ only in phase, not in text: both come from the one deselected_reason source, so they always name the same cause.

The line is distinguished: it names the exact cause so you can confirm a publisher was turned off the way you intended. When both selectors apply to one publisher, --skip wins and the line reports the denylist cause.

The five publish stages (blob, snapcraft-publish, docker, docker-sign, announce) run outside the dispatch loop, so a deselected one emits a single line at its stage — skipped blob — not in --publishers allowlist / skipped docker — excluded via --skip — rather than the in-flight-plus-summary pair. The wording is identical, so you still see exactly which selector turned it off.

$ anodizer release --skip npm
   • skipped npm — excluded via --skip   # in-flight
   …    # every other configured publisher runs
   • skipped npm — excluded via --skip   # summary (same wording)

$ anodizer release --publishers cargo
   • publishing cargo
   • skipped npm — not in --publishers allowlist   # in-flight
   …
   • skipped npm — not in --publishers allowlist   # summary (same wording)

Validating a selection ahead of release

check config --publishers <names> validates the selection against the configured publishers without running anything. Naming a publisher you forgot to configure is an error, so you catch a selection mistake before tag time rather than at release time:

$ anodizer check config --publishers cargo
   • validating configuration
   • Config is valid.

$ anodizer check config --publishers npm
Error: publisher 'npm' named in --publishers is not configured (no npm publish block)

The same loud error guards a typo here as on release/publish:

$ anodizer check config --publishers crates
Error: invalid --publishers value(s): crates. Valid publishers: cargo, …

Typos fail loud — one-way-door safety

Several publishers push to one-way-door registries (crates.io, Cloudsmith, Chocolatey, winget, AUR). A misread selection must never quietly publish nothing or everything, so anodizer rejects any unknown token with a nonzero exit before dispatch begins:

$ anodizer release --publishers homebrwe   # typo
Error: invalid --publishers value(s): homebrwe. Valid publishers: cargo, …
$ echo $?
1

Because the error fires before the publish pipeline runs, a typo can never reach a registry — you fix the name and re-run.

See also

• required: — control which publisher failures fail the release.
• NPM — npm provenance requires a GitHub-hosted runner, so CI peels npm onto a separate github-hosted job while the rest of the release runs elsewhere.