| name | cowel-version-upgrade |
| description | Upgrade COWEL paper sources and repo tooling to a newer COWEL release. Use when bumping : cowel version lines in src/*.cow, updating scripts and GitHub workflows, rebuilding docs, and verifying bitwise-identical outputs. |
| argument-hint | <old-version> <new-version> [--dry-run] |
| user-invocable | true |
COWEL Version Upgrade
Upgrade this repository from one COWEL version to another in a repeatable, low-risk way.
When To Use
- Bumping COWEL from one release to another (for example
0.9.0 to 0.10.0)
- Updating paper headers in
src/*.cow
- Updating workflow and script pins for COWEL
- Rebuilding docs and checking for bitwise-identical output
Inputs
- Old version (currently in sources), for example
0.9.0
- New version (target), for example
0.10.0
- Optional
--dry-run to preview changed files
Procedure
- Run version replacement:
- Rebuild and verify:
- If verification fails, patch only impactful nested inline-code rendering sites (for example switching selected
tcode to ocode) and rerun verification.
Decision Points
- If only source headers changed and verify passes: no content-level patching required.
- If verify fails with nested-highlighting artifacts in generated HTML: update only the specific nested inline-code call sites that affect output.
- If a file should intentionally remain on an older COWEL syntax version: do not force-upgrade it; keep versioned legacy files unchanged unless explicitly requested.
Files Typically Touched
src/*.cow: version header lines like \: cowel X.Y.Z
scripts/rebuild-docs.sh: version comments/grep patterns
.github/workflows/*.yml: pinned cowel@X.Y.Z
README.md: documented version pin(s)
.devcontainer/post-create.sh: devcontainer COWEL version pin
- Optional repo-specific setup docs (for example
.github/copilot-instructions.md)
Completion Criteria
- No remaining old-version references:
rg -n "<old>|cowel@<old>|\\: cowel <old>"
- Rebuild succeeds for targeted docs.
- Verification passes with no mismatches.
Notes
- Keep changes minimal and targeted.
- Prefer surgical source edits over broad style changes when restoring bitwise output compatibility.