Maintaining a private fork

Yoke tolerates an operator-maintained fork: you supply the installer, release artifacts, wheel index, and server image. Installers and relays can stay bound to that distribution. You own building, publishing, testing, and updating it; upstream's hosted release service does not publish your fork.

Bind the first download

Serve the fork's installer shim at your distribution's /install endpoint. Download that shim from your own host and set the same distribution origin for its Python helper and wheels:

curl -fsSL https://packages.example.com/install -o /tmp/yoke-fork-install
YOKE_INSTALL_BASE_URL=https://packages.example.com \
  sh /tmp/yoke-fork-install --channel private

Replace the example host and channel with your own. Setting the origin only after downloading the upstream installer does not bind the first download to your fork. The origin is a credential-free HTTP(S) origin, without a path, query, fragment, or embedded username/password. It names the package host, which can differ from your control-plane API host.

After installation, open a new terminal and run yoke status. The installer records settings.distribution.origin and .channel in ~/.yoke/config.json. Later yoke update reads that record in a fresh shell; no persistent shell export is needed. yoke update --channel NAME selects another channel at the recorded origin and saves it after a successful update.

For an install missing the record, explicitly select your distribution:

yoke config distribution set --origin https://packages.example.com --channel private

Run the command's --help for its flags. This selection changes the install distribution, not your active control-plane connection.

Supply artifacts and a wheel index

The distribution host must serve the fork's dist/install.py, channel document at dist/channels/CHANNEL.json, release metadata under dist/releases/VERSION/, and a Python simple index at /simple/. Supply the split product wheels with one matching version (yoke-cli, yoke-contracts, yoke-core, and yoke-harness) and their dependencies. The installer and updater consume these existing formats; a bare directory of wheels alone is not an update channel. Channel documents used by yoke update carry schema version 3, the channel and version, an installer.python_url equal to ORIGIN/dist/install.py, and migration history evidence with the source commit and manifest digest/URLs. Keep the artifacts immutable and verify them through your own publishing process.

A private relay installs the exact immutable version reported by its server handshake, using RECORDED_ORIGIN/simple/. Publish that version before booting the server that advertises it; it must include a PEP 440 local release segment. The relay does not use the channel to choose a different version, derive an index from the API URL, or substitute upstream's Yoke index. Public dependencies still resolve from PyPI. Hosted upstream stage and production connections use their respective hosted indexes.

Configure the server connection through Onboard, then run:

yoke --env team relay install
yoke --env team relay status

Use your configured environment in place of team. For a private host with no valid distribution record, relay installation refuses with relay_release_fetch_failed and a distribution_origin_missing or other distribution validation reason. The refusal records recovery instructions in relay status and preserves any prior release. Repair the record with yoke config distribution set, then retry the named relay install command.

Build and boot your server

Docker must be available. The local core launcher can build directly from your fork checkout and start that image:

yoke core start --from-checkout /path/to/yoke-fork --build
yoke core status

After updating the checkout, rebuild with yoke core upgrade --from-checkout /path/to/yoke-fork --build. Run each command's --help for ports and other options. For a separately published image, use yoke core start --image IMAGE or initialize a team server bundle with yoke self-host init --dir /path/to/server --image IMAGE. Supply your fork's exact immutable image reference; explicitly selecting an image avoids selecting an upstream image from release metadata. Follow Self-hosted mode for starting the bundle, connecting, and TLS. Your image, client wheels, and handshake version must describe the same build.

yoke update and yoke self-host upgrade protect an active source-checkout install: they refuse to replace it with packaged releases. Update source with git, then rebuild the server from that checkout. A source-only server does not by itself supply the versioned wheels a release-following relay needs; publish matching artifacts before using that relay path.

Unsupported at this level

• Publishing a private fork through upstream workflows or upstream attestations.
• Automatically accepting schema-changing upstream merges. You own assessing

migrations, rehearsing them against your universes, and maintaining history.

• Downstream version ordering or channel arbitration between upstream and a fork.
• Fork-owned item gates or a fork-specific release-governance system.

These are outside the tolerated-fork contract. Keep your publishing and upgrade policy operator-owned; no automatic fork governance is provided.