Release pipeline glossary

Definitions for Pear desktop release and OTA vocabulary — staging, provisioning, multisig, pear links, and release lines.

This page lists terms you will see when reading about Pear desktop releases and OTA updates. For how they connect, read Release pipeline and Pear desktop application architecture.

Related pages: Release pipeline and Deploy your application use this vocabulary throughout.

Term	Meaning
OTA	Over-the-air: delivering a new app build without a traditional reinstall flow from a store.
OTA updates	Syncing the running app’s bundle from a peer-to-peer source when the application drive changes.
P2P	Peer-to-peer: machines replicate directly; distribution does not require a single central server if seeders exist.
Application drive	The Hyperdrive that holds the published app files and version history for a given `pear://` link.
Deployment directory	The multi-architecture folder produced after per-OS builds are assembled (for example with `pear-build`) and before `pear stage`. See Release pipeline.
Multisig	Co-signing: a quorum of signers must approve before writes land on the production drive.
Pear link	Stable `pear://…` identifier the swarm routes on; see the Links row in Command Line Interface and Storage and distribution.
Quorum	Minimum number of multisig signers required to commit a release.
Release line	A parallel deployment stream (for example development, staging, rc) at its own stability level, each with its own staged link.
Seeding	Keeping a drive announced and available so peers can discover and replicate it (`pear seed`).
Vendor signing	OS-level code signing (Apple notarization, Windows Authenticode, etc.) so distributables run on other machines without quarantine.
Versioned link	A `pear://` link that pins `fork`, `length`, and `key` of the Hypercore behind the application Hyperdrive — used when provisioning between known versions.

Release pipeline glossary

See also

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