Release Only After Artifact Validation

RUST-RELEASE-ONLY-AFTER-ARTIFACT-VALIDATION

Summary

Validate the actual release artifact before publishing instead of trusting the working tree. This catches missing files, stale generated content, and packaging mistakes while the release can still be fixed.

Rule

Release and tag Rust crates only after validating the package artifact.

Why

The crate package is the artifact users receive. A working tree can contain files that cargo package excludes, generated content that was not updated, or metadata that disagrees with README, Rustdoc, changelog, license files, docs.rs config, and support claims.

Dry-run the publish where possible, inspect included artifacts, and tag after the release artifact is validated. Tagging first makes it harder to repair a bad package without confusing history.

Helps

Helps Rust releases avoid missing docs, stale generated files, wrong metadata, and premature tags.

Limits

Emergency releases may compress the checklist, but they still need artifact validation before publication whenever possible.

Agent Instruction

Before publishing or tagging a Rust release, dry-run and inspect the package artifact, metadata,
docs, examples, license files, and generated content.

Mechanisms

Supported by cargo package --list, cargo publish --dry-run, docs.rs metadata checks, changelog review, and release CI.