ci(examples): build every starter with its own build script (DEV-2737)

[demtario]

Closes DEV-2737.

The gap

No workflow ran a starter's own build, so the type-checking half of examples/ was uncovered. ci.yml's jobs are all working-directory: runner and never enter examples/*; e2e-starter-matrix.yml boots FRAMEWORK_DEV.cmd, a dev server, and explicitly skips even a workspace build; import-starters.yml only ever runs pnpm install --lockfile-only, which resolves without building. That is how DEV-2727 (18.1.0 tightened a public type, examples/angular stopped compiling, found by a person opening the demo after release) and DEV-2730 (TS2688 in examples/base-web outside the repo tree) both shipped.

server-examples-build.yml already closed the same gap for server-examples/ when DEV-2731 landed. This is the examples/ half, and that workflow is the template: a discover job emits the 16 starters from the checkout, a frozen-lockfile lane guards starter edits on paths: examples/**, and a weekly lane moves Handsontable to the current release.

Three design points, all measured rather than assumed

The oracle is the starter's own package.json build, not the generated bucket artifact. The bucket looks like the more faithful target — it is what ships — but the only product path that runs a build (share.ts:266) passes the command through snapshotBuildCommand, which strips a leading tsc / tsc -b / vue-tsc. Building what ships would reproduce the stripping and stay green on the entire class of defect this workflow exists to catch. Worth flagging because the ticket's own text proposed the bucket.

The build runs outside the repo tree. With the pre-DEV-2730 tsconfig.node.json restored, examples/base-web emits dist in-tree and fails TS2688 from a copy under a clean parent — same starter, same config, because a types entry resolves through this repo's untracked root node_modules/@types/node. An in-tree job would have missed DEV-2730 entirely.

The canary lane uses pnpm update --latest, not pnpm add <pkg>@latest. Every starter's committed spec is already "latest", against which add is a no-op: on a copy whose lock pinned 18.0.0 with 18.1.0 on the registry, it reported "Already up to date" and left 18.0.0 installed. A canary that rebuilds the pinned version forever is worse than no canary, so the lane also asserts the resolved version equals npm's dist-tag — printing the version proves nothing, since a silent no-op prints a plausible number.

Also in here: a real drift in BUILD_CONFIG

BUILD_CONFIG.vue.buildCommand was vite build, while examples/vue builds with run-p type-check "build-only {@}" --. The vue-tsc pass existed in the starter and nowhere in our config — dropped in config/frameworks.json, upstream of any stripping.

Declared now as vue-tsc --build --force && vite build, which snapshotBuildCommand reduces to exactly vite build, so container behaviour is byte-identical to today. Deliberately not the starter's literal run-p form: that string does not match the strip regex, so the share path would start running a type-check in ephemeral containers — the thing the strip exists to prevent — and would need npm-run-all2 present there.

build-command-drift.test.mjs pins it as a property (BUILD_CONFIG never drops a type-check the starter's own build performs) rather than string equality, because the one framework an equality allowlist would have to exempt is the defect itself. The property also lets nuxt's intentional nuxt generate divergence through on its own merit, with no allowlist at all.

Coverage is partial, and the header says so

10 of 16 starters type-check on build; remix is covered through its own typecheck script, which the workflow runs when a starter ships one. Genuinely uncovered: ant-design, javascript, react-js (no TS surface at all — zero tsconfigs), astro (ships no astro check), and nuxt, which cannot type-check without adding vue-tsc to it. Worth doing, but not in this workflow's scope.

All 16 are built regardless, not just the type-checking ones: a curated list would drift, and the other six still get their bundler and config exercised for the price of one short job.

This does not duplicate pipeline/starter-type-roots.test.mjs — it complements it. That test is the fast static half and declares two limits for itself (unfollowed extends chains, top-level tsconfigs only, so examples/nuxt/server/tsconfig.json is never inspected). A real build covers both empirically for all 16 starters, while the static test stays green-on-PR in seconds and rides the cherry-pick onto prod-examples/*.

Verification

Every lane has a must-fail proof, because a job that cannot go red is decorative.

check	result
All 16 starters, frozen install + build, outside the tree	green; remix typecheck exits 0
DEV-2730 reintroduced (pre-fix tsconfig.node.json)	TS2688: Cannot find type definition file for 'node', no dist
…the same defect built in-tree	passes, emits dist — the out-of-tree requirement, measured
DEV-2727 reintroduced (GridSettings annotation dropped)	TS2322: … not assignable to type 'GridSettings' in the component template, no dist
Output-presence guard on an empty build	exits 1
Dist-tag assertion after the no-op pnpm add	fails (18.0.0 vs 18.1.0); passes after update --latest
pnpm test	969 tests, 0 fail; drift test red before the vue fix, green after
pnpm typecheck	clean

The one thing not verified locally is the workflow itself on a real runner — this PR touches a path in its own trigger filter, so the 16 build jobs run here. build-latest is non-PR only and needs a workflow_dispatch or the Monday 05:00 UTC cron.

Two notes on runner specifics, both deliberate: no cache: pnpm (the restore runs before the extraction and resolves the store relative to the checkout, so an install under RUNNER_TEMP can miss it with no signal — 16 cold installs is the cheaper trade), and tar rather than rsync, which is not guaranteed on the ubuntu-latest image.

Ticket corrections

Three premises in DEV-2737 did not survive contact, and the description should be updated:

• DEV-2731 was the DEV-2727 class, not the DEV-2730 class. 3aa26d22 changed zero tsconfigs; all seven server-examples Angular frontends already carry "types": []. It was 18.1 type tightening.
• 10 of 16 starters type-check on build, not 11. remix vite:build does not, which is why it ships a separate typecheck script.
• Design question 4 is already answered — server-examples/ has had its own build workflow since DEV-2731.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

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Note

Low Risk
Primarily new CI gates and metadata alignment; share-time container builds stay unchanged because vue-tsc is still stripped before execution.

Overview
Adds .github/workflows/examples-build.yml so every examples/* starter with a build script is installed and built in CI—something existing workflows never did. A discover job auto-matrices starters; build runs on PRs (examples/**) with frozen lockfile, copies each starter outside the repo tree (so ancestor node_modules cannot mask missing @types), runs pnpm build, optional typecheck/type-check scripts, and asserts Handsontable resolves and output dirs are non-empty. build-latest (schedule/dispatch only) bumps Handsontable packages via pnpm update --latest and asserts the resolved version matches npm’s dist-tag.

Aligns Vue buildCommand in frameworks.json / generated catalog and BUILD_CONFIG with the starter’s type-check (vue-tsc --build --force && vite build); share snapshots still run only vite build after snapshotBuildCommand strips the prefix. Adds build-command-drift.test.mjs so BUILD_CONFIG cannot drop type-check steps that starters perform, and documents the workflow in TESTING.md.

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[qunabu]

Task linked: DEV-2727 Angular demo example not starting after release of 18.1.0
Task linked: DEV-2730 base-web starter fails TS2688 in any isolated build (no @types/node)
Task linked: DEV-2731 server-examples: Angular frontends break at Handsontable 18.1, and all 23 are still pinned to 18.0.0
Task linked: DEV-2737 Nothing in CI runs a starter's own build, so build-path breakage ships silently