ci: cut a firmware pre-release on every merge to beta

[henols]

Companion to henols/firestarter_app#48, which drops the same filter in the host repo for the same reason.

The bug

beta-build.yml carried a paths-ignore list:

'**.md'  '**.sh'  '.gitignore'  'docs/**'  'documents/**'  'images/**'  '.vscode/**'  '.editorconfig/**'

A merge touching only those paths bumped no version and published nothing, so the published beta stopped corresponding to the beta branch.

Why this is worse for firmware than for the host

The version is compiled in. FW_VERSION comes from include/version.h, which only changes when the bump step runs. A beta commit that skipped the bump would build firmware reporting the previous release's version — a binary that misreports which version it is, and a host-side version gate reading a number that doesn't identify the code it's talking to.

The host degrades to a package whose metadata is merely stale. The firmware ships the wrong answer inside the image.

No publish loop — settled by evidence

Not by reasoning about GITHUB_TOKEN semantics. The Apply automatic changes auto-commit writes include/version.h, which was never in the removed list. If a GITHUB_TOKEN push could trigger this workflow, commit 66c3101 on beta would have started a second run.

It started none. One Firestarter beta pre-release build on beta today, at 09:08:05.

Consequence worth stating

Docs-only merges to beta will now also cut a pre-release with the full four-asset set (uno, uno328pb, leonardo, py32f071). That is the intent — beta is a moving pre-release channel, not a curated one, and constant version bumping there is explicitly acceptable.

Resulting state across both repos

repo	workflow	push branches	path filter
fw	beta-build.yml	[beta]	none
app	beta-release.yml	[beta]	none
fw	build.yml	['**', '!beta']	yes (gates only; publishes on main)
app	ci.yml	['**']	yes (publishes nothing)
app	release.yml	[main]	yes (stable, operator-gated)

Both beta publishers now agree. actionlint clean.

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