release-channels.mdx

title	Release Channels
description	Choose between Wheels stable and bleeding-edge — and switch between them.
type	explanation
sidebar	order 5

import { Aside, Tabs, TabItem, Steps, CardGrid, LinkCard } from '@astrojs/starlight/components';

Wheels ships on two parallel channels. Pick the one that matches how much churn you can absorb.

Stable vs bleeding-edge at a glance

	Stable	Bleeding-edge
Package name	wheels	wheels-be
Tracks	GA tags on main	Snapshot pre-releases on develop
Update cadence	When a new GA ships (~quarterly)	On every merge to develop (multiple per day during active development)
Source repo	wheels-dev/wheels	wheels-dev/wheels-snapshots
Best for	Production apps, teams that want predictability	Framework contributors, early adopters, validating fixes before they GA
Version string shape	4.0.0, 4.1.0	4.0.1-snapshot.1700
wheels version reports	(stable)	(bleeding-edge)

How to tell which channel you're on

wheels version

The output's parenthetical tells you the channel:

Wheels 4.0.3 (stable)
Java 21.0.11

…or:

Wheels 4.0.0-snapshot.1787 (bleeding-edge)
Java 21.0.11

Note the command is wheels version (no dashes). The flag form wheels --version prints a Wheels Version: <version> line plus ASCII art, with no channel parenthetical.

If you see (development) instead, you're running from a dev checkout (cloned source repo) rather than an installed package — which is its own thing and not covered here.

Installing each channel

brew tap wheels-dev/wheels

# Stable
brew install wheels

# Bleeding-edge
brew install wheels-be

Homebrew 5.1+ asks you to trust third-party taps on first use — run brew trust wheels-dev/wheels once if prompted (one trust covers both formulas).

The two formulas are mutually exclusive — both expose the wheels binary, so Homebrew refuses to install both at once. To switch channels, uninstall one and install the other (see Switching channels below).

Both channels are available via a Scoop bucket:

scoop bucket add wheels https://github.com/wheels-dev/scoop-wheels

# Stable
scoop install wheels

# Bleeding-edge
scoop install wheels-be

The two packages are mutually exclusive — both expose the wheels binary, so Scoop refuses to install both at once. To switch channels, uninstall one and install the other (see Switching channels below). Both inline OpenJDK 21, so no separate Java setup is needed — see Installing Wheels → Windows for the Scoop + git prerequisites.

Each channel ships from a signed native repository — distinct package names (wheels vs wheels-be) so both channels can coexist on the same host:

• Stable: https://apt.wheels.dev stable main / https://yum.wheels.dev/wheels.repo → package wheels
• Bleeding-edge: https://apt.wheels.dev bleeding-edge main / https://yum.wheels.dev/wheels-be.repo → package wheels-be

curl -fsSL https://apt.wheels.dev/wheels.gpg \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/wheels.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/wheels.gpg] https://apt.wheels.dev stable main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wheels.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install wheels

sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://yum.wheels.dev/wheels.repo
sudo dnf install wheels

curl -fsSL https://apt.wheels.dev/wheels.gpg \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/wheels.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/wheels.gpg] https://apt.wheels.dev bleeding-edge main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wheels-be.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install wheels-be

sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://yum.wheels.dev/wheels-be.repo
sudo dnf install wheels-be

Both repos are GPG-signed (fingerprint 6872 16C9 32B4 9F03 94E0 9AED 5D89 AF8F 9C9B 8CFB); apt update / dnf check-update verifies the signature on every refresh. The published key is ASCII-armored, so the Debian/Ubuntu snippet pipes it through sudo gpg --dearmor — apt rejects an armored key written straight to a signed-by= keyring. The raw .deb/.rpm are also uploaded to each GitHub Release as a fallback for air-gapped installs (see CLI Installation).

GitHub Releases doesn't allow `~` in asset filenames, so the SemVer pre-release tilde gets normalized to a dot. The on-disk filename for snapshot 1787 is `wheels-be_4.0.0.snapshot.1787_amd64.deb`, not `wheels-be_4.0.0~snapshot.1787_amd64.deb`. The package's *internal* version (what `dpkg --info` reports) keeps the tilde for correct precedence.

Switching channels

On macOS and Windows, the channels publish two differently-named packages (wheels vs wheels-be) that both install a binary called wheels, so the package managers refuse to install both at once — Homebrew enforces this via conflicts_with, Scoop refuses outright.

On Linux, the two channels likewise publish differently-named packages: wheels (stable, from wheels-dev/wheels) and wheels-be (bleeding-edge, from wheels-dev/wheels-snapshots). Switching = installing the package from the other repo. The wheels-be .deb declares Replaces: wheels + Conflicts: wheels, so on Debian/Ubuntu apt handles the stable → bleeding-edge swap automatically. The wheels-be .rpm declares only Conflicts: (no Obsoletes:), and the stable wheels package doesn't declare either against wheels-be, so the dnf direction and the reverse (bleeding-edge → stable) both need an explicit remove step. Snippets below cover each case.

brew uninstall wheels
brew install wheels-be

brew uninstall wheels-be
brew install wheels

# Add the bleeding-edge source (uses the same key already imported for stable).
# wheels-be .deb declares Replaces: wheels + Conflicts: wheels, so apt removes
# the stable wheels package and installs wheels-be in its place — no separate
# `apt remove` needed.
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/wheels.gpg] https://apt.wheels.dev bleeding-edge main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wheels-be.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install wheels-be

# wheels-be .rpm declares Conflicts: wheels but no Obsoletes, so dnf
# refuses to install while the stable wheels package is present. Remove
# it first, then add the bleeding-edge .repo source and install.
sudo dnf remove wheels
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://yum.wheels.dev/wheels-be.repo
sudo dnf install wheels-be

# wheels-be declares Conflicts: wheels, so apt refuses to install wheels
# while wheels-be is present. Remove wheels-be, then install wheels —
# both come from the same apt.wheels.dev source list, so no extra setup
# is needed.
sudo apt remove wheels-be
sudo apt install wheels

# Same as Debian above — wheels-be declares Conflicts: wheels, so dnf
# refuses to install wheels while wheels-be is present. Remove wheels-be
# first, then install wheels. Both come from yum.wheels.dev (stable
# lives at wheels.repo, bleeding-edge at wheels-be.repo); the stable
# .repo file is left in place from the original install.
sudo dnf remove wheels-be
sudo dnf install wheels

scoop uninstall wheels
scoop install wheels-be

scoop uninstall wheels-be
scoop install wheels

What happens to your apps when you switch

Already-scaffolded apps are unaffected. Each Wheels app commits its own copy of the framework into vendor/wheels/ at scaffold time, so the version baked into your project is independent of what channel your CLI is on. Switching wheels → wheels-be only affects what next wheels new produces.

If you want an existing app to follow the channel switch:

wheels upgrade check --to=<version>   # scan for breaking changes first
wheels upgrade apply                   # swap vendor/wheels/ from the CLI bundle (creates backup)

…or re-scaffold the app's vendor/wheels/ from a fresh wheels new.

When to pick which

Pick stable (wheels) when:

• You're shipping a production app
• You want predictable upgrade windows (one major release per ~quarter, see Upgrading Wheels)
• You don't want to think about CI breaking from upstream churn
• You're following the tutorial — it's pinned to stable behavior

Pick bleeding-edge (wheels-be) when:

• You're contributing to Wheels and want to dogfood your changes
• You're validating that an upcoming fix lands correctly before GA
• You're early-adopting a feature that's merged but not yet released
• You're OK with the occasional regression (we revert quickly, but the window exists)

If you're not sure, install stable. You can always switch later — your apps come with you.

How the channels work under the hood

This section is for the curious. If you just want to use Wheels, you can skip it.

What "snapshot" means

A snapshot is an automated pre-release built and published on every merge to the develop branch. The version string 4.0.0-snapshot.1787 decodes as:

• 4.0.0 — the target of the next release (a baseline, not a commitment — the actual GA could end up being 4.0.0, 4.0.1, 4.1.0, or whatever the maintainer picks at tag time)
• -snapshot — SemVer pre-release identifier (sorts strictly less than 4.0.0)
• .1787 — github.run_number of the workflow that built it (monotonically increasing)

So brew upgrade wheels-be always lands on a numerically-newer snapshot, and any GA release sorts strictly higher than every snapshot that preceded it.

Where snapshots live

Snapshots publish to wheels-dev/wheels-snapshots instead of the main repo's Releases page. The split keeps the main repo's Releases page focused on GA tags (~6–12 per year) instead of drowning them under snapshot churn (~200–500 per year). Snapshots auto-delete after 30 days; GA releases stay forever.

Auto-update propagation

When a snapshot publishes:

1. The release workflow on wheels-dev/wheels dispatches a wheels-released event to the brew tap with channel=bleeding-edge in the payload.
2. The tap's bleeding-edge-update.yml workflow fires, computes fresh sha256s, opens an auto-bump PR for Formula/wheels-be.rb.
3. Tap CI validates the formula (brew audit + brew fetch), maintainer rubberstamps, the PR auto-merges.
4. brew upgrade wheels-be lands the new version on user machines.

End-to-end latency: ~5–10 minutes from develop merge to user-installable.

For stable releases, the same chain runs against Formula/wheels.rb and the auto-update.yml workflow.

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