ci: improve artifact verification flow

[Haricharanpanjwani]

Closes #720.

Improve the Apache release artifact verification flow used by voters and release managers.

Summary

• add structured pass/fail/skip result collection and summary rendering in scripts/verify_apache_artifacts.py
• verify LICENSE, NOTICE, and DISCLAIMER contents in release artifacts
• verify wheel-specific license files, including LICENSE-wheel
• add reproducible rebuild verification by rebuilding from the source artifact and comparing outputs against release artifacts
• integrate Apache RAT results into the verifier summary flow
• support RAT 0.18 output quirks, including log-line preambles, trailing summary lines, and relative-target invocation from extracted temp directories
• fix .rat-excludes patterns so RAT 0.18 applies the intended exclusions during end-to-end verification
• align release-wheel and rebuild-wheel packaging so reproducible comparison passes against RC-style artifacts
• add optional vote email generation via --vote-email and --vote-email-output
• add tests covering metadata verification, wheel license checks, rebuild comparison flow, vote email rendering, and RAT parser/invocation compatibility
• address review feedback by converting the verifier tests to pytest, making wheel metadata requirements explicit, removing the generic build_tool path, and isolating rebuild environment changes to subprocess execution

How I tested this

• ran python -m pytest tests/test_verify_apache_artifacts.py
• ran PYTHONPYCACHEPREFIX=/tmp/pycache python -m py_compile scripts/apache_release.py scripts/verify_apache_artifacts.py tests/test_verify_apache_artifacts.py
• ran python scripts/verify_apache_artifacts.py --help
• ran python scripts/verify_apache_artifacts.py all --help
• created a clean worktree from the PR commit and set up a fresh .venv
• built RC-style artifacts with python scripts/apache_release.py archive 0.41.0 0, python scripts/apache_release.py sdist 0.41.0 0, and python scripts/apache_release.py wheel 0.41.0 0
• ran python scripts/verify_apache_artifacts.py signatures --artifacts-dir dist
• ran python scripts/verify_apache_artifacts.py artifacts --artifacts-dir dist
• ran python scripts/verify_apache_artifacts.py licenses --artifacts-dir dist --rat-jar /Users/hpanjwani/Downloads/apache-rat-0.18/apache-rat-0.18.jar
• ran python scripts/verify_apache_artifacts.py reproducible --artifacts-dir dist
• ran python scripts/verify_apache_artifacts.py all --artifacts-dir dist --rat-jar /Users/hpanjwani/Downloads/apache-rat-0.18/apache-rat-0.18.jar --vote-email --vote-email-output /tmp/burr-vote-email.txt

Notes

• this PR is intentionally scoped to issue ci: improve voter verification script #720 and covers the requested acceptance criteria: reproducible rebuild verification, RAT integration, artifact metadata checks, clear pass/fail summaries, and optional vote email generation
• end-to-end verification was done against the RC-style artifact set produced by scripts/apache_release.py
• the main reviewer-facing areas are scripts/verify_apache_artifacts.py, tests/test_verify_apache_artifacts.py, .rat-excludes, and the release/rebuild alignment in scripts/apache_release.py

Checklist

• PR has an informative and human-readable title
• Changes are limited to a single goal
• Code passed local verification for this change
• Any change in functionality is tested
• Project documentation/help text was updated where applicable

[Haricharanpanjwani]

I ran the new verifier flow locally in a clean clone to exercise the issue #720 implementation paths.

What the local run confirmed:

• LICENSE / NOTICE / DISCLAIMER checks pass on built artifacts
• wheel license-file checks pass, including LICENSE-wheel
• structured pass/fail summary output is working
• vote email draft generation is working
• the reproducible rebuild verification path is active: it rebuilt from source and compared rebuilt outputs against the artifacts under test

Caveats from the local run:

• the local artifact set was unsigned, so .asc and .sha512 checks failed as expected
• Apache RAT was not exercised in that run unless a local --rat-jar was provided
• the reproducible checksum comparison failed against locally built artifacts, which shows the check is active rather than silently passing

Reproducibility-specific caveats encountered:

• local flit build artifacts do not necessarily match the Apache release-script naming/layout without additional release-style handling
• a manual rename was needed to exercise the source-artifact path in the verifier outside the full release flow
• a passing reproducible checksum comparison depends on reproducible release artifact generation, including the work tracked in ci: reproducible builds with SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH #716
• in other words, this local run validates the new verification logic, but a fully green reproducibility result still depends on the release artifacts themselves being reproducible

So this comment is not claiming a fully green release verification from local demo artifacts. It is documenting that the new verifier checks are implemented, executable, and correctly detect both success and failure conditions.

[Haricharanpanjwani]

Follow-up update pushed in 9c8417dc (ci: support modern Apache RAT output).

This came out of local validation with Apache RAT 0.18:

• RAT emits INFO/WARN lines before the XML payload
• RAT 0.18 uses a newer <license ...> XML shape than the parser originally expected
• rerunning the verifier could also pick up generated rat-report-* files as artifacts

This follow-up makes the verifier more robust and backward compatible by:

• stripping log preamble lines before XML parsing
• supporting both the older RAT XML form and the RAT 0.18 license element shape
• ignoring generated rat-report-* files during artifact enumeration
• adding regression tests for those cases

[skrawcz]

Nice improvement to the release verification flow. The structured VerificationSummary / CheckResult approach is clean and makes the output much more useful for voters. The RAT 0.18 compatibility work (log-line parsing, relative-target invocation, new XML format handling) and reproducible build verification are both valuable additions.

One question on _build_reproducible_wheel (line 772): the os.environ.clear() followed by os.environ.update(original_env) pattern is risky if anything goes wrong between those two calls — the process would be left with an empty environment. Could you pass the modified env through to the subprocess calls instead of mutating os.environ directly?

A few smaller suggestions inline. All 9 tests pass locally and the overall structure is solid.

[andreahlert]

tks @Haricharanpanjwani !

looked at this. the CI failure is just a missing init.py, easy fix one thing tho, get_first_matching_hook means only one interceptor per action right? might want to document that EOF

[elijahbenizzy]

MInd rebasing? Looks reasonable. I added some changes so can you rebase? Then I'll look again.

[Haricharanpanjwani]

tks @Haricharanpanjwani !

looked at this. the CI failure is just a missing init.py, easy fix one thing tho, get_first_matching_hook means only one interceptor per action right? might want to document that EOF

Rebased onto the latest main and force-pushed. The branch now includes the missing tests/__init__.py fix for the CI failure as well.

[andreahlert]

LGTM

just _render_template still has a lazy from jinja2 import ... inside the function body — @skrawcz asked to just make it required, so might as well move it to the top-level imports

[Haricharanpanjwani]

just _render_template still has a lazy from jinja2 import ... inside the function body — @skrawcz asked to just make it required, so might as well move it to the top-level imports

@andreahlert I checked the current branch tip after the rebase and that _render_template helper / lazy jinja2 import is no longer present in the PR changes, so there isn’t anything left to move to top-level imports here.

[github-actions]

This PR has been inactive for 16 days after receiving review feedback.
Converting to draft.

Please mark it as ready for review when you have addressed the comments.
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