history

Release validation includes Base MATLAB compatibility

id: LK-20260717-release-validation-hardening
date: 2026-07-17
sequence: 129
type: ci
compatibility: compatible
scope: scheduled and release-candidate validation

Context

LabKit already exposed buildtool baseMatlab, but GitHub Actions did not run the broad MATLAB product-ownership analysis. A release candidate could therefore pass headless, coverage, and GUI jobs while the explicit Base MATLAB compatibility gate remained a local-only check.

Decision and rationale

Run the existing public baseMatlab task in scheduled and manually dispatched workflows, and require it before a validated release tag can be created. Ordinary pull requests and main pushes retain the smaller headless gate because the static call scan and representative fallback workflows already run there.

Changes

• Added a dedicated Base MATLAB compatibility job with JUnit, active-test, log, and artifact reporting.
• Added that job to the release-test dependency gate.
• Corrected the CI contract test so it discovers actual tasks: values and checks them against the executable build-task catalog.
• Updated artifact upload jobs to the current Node.js 24 action generation.

User and data impact

No App behavior or saved data changes. A release tag is now blocked when MATLAB resolves production source to an undeclared MathWorks product.

Compatibility and migration

The public buildtool baseMatlab command is unchanged. GitHub-hosted runners meet the action runtime requirement; no self-hosted runner migration is introduced.

Validation

The CI policy contract verifies job scope, public-task ownership, diagnostics, timeouts, parent checkout depth, and release-gate dependencies. The Base MATLAB task remains covered by its own dependency guardrail.

Evidence

.github/workflows/matlab-tests.yml is the executable release gate; tests/cases/contract/project/ci/CiValidationPolicyGuardrailTest.m protects its routing and dependency structure.

Known limitations and follow-up

The product-ownership analysis depends on MATLAB's dependency report and cannot replace manual scientific or interactive App validation.