automation

This branch is the GitHub default branch for vbox_sdk, but it doesn't contain the SDK or the Python package -- it's CI plumbing only. This is where the check-new-release.yml / backfill.yml scheduled/manual workflows live, plus the scripts they run.

It has to be the default branch because GitHub only fires schedule-triggered workflows off the workflow file version on the default branch -- keeping this cron job on main or pylibsonly would mean those branches had to own CI concerns that aren't really theirs.

What's here

• scripts/check_new_versions.py -- scrapes download.virtualbox.org, diffs against manifest.json to find SDK releases that haven't been published yet.
• scripts/extract_vboxapi.py -- pulls installer/vboxapi/* out of an SDK zip.
• scripts/version.py -- maps a VirtualBox SDK version + build number to a PEP 440 package version. This is also where the old versioning bug (see vbox_sdk#3) is fixed for good: the package version is only ever written by this script, never by hand.
• scripts/release.py -- orchestrates one release end to end: download the SDK zip, update main (full mirror, tagged sdk-vX.Y.Z), update pylibsonly (extracted vboxapi/ + pyproject.toml version bump, tagged vX.Y.Z), uv build + uv publish, GitHub release, then records the release in manifest.json.
• manifest.json -- the source of truth for "have we published this VirtualBox build yet." Only ever updated by release.py, as the last step of a successful release, so a failed run partway through is always safely retryable.
• .github/workflows/check-new-release.yml -- weekly cron, calls release.py with no arguments to release every new version it finds.
• .github/workflows/backfill.yml -- manual (workflow_dispatch), calls release.py --version X.Y.Z for one specific historical version.

Running locally

uv sync
uv run pytest
uv run scripts/check_new_versions.py       # lists what would be released, no side effects
uv run scripts/release.py --dry-run        # runs the full flow but skips push/publish/gh release

release.py (without --dry-run) pushes to main/pylibsonly, publishes to PyPI, and creates GitHub releases -- treat it like you would any other one-way release command.