# ConfigKit v0.6.0

This minor release reduces avoidable configuration-loading and inspection work,
adopts ReleaseKit for source publication, and raises the consumer Go minimum to
1.26.0. The public configuration model remains unchanged from v0.5.0.

## Changes

- Reduce temporary path allocations by sizing pointer-formatting buffers,
  combining final metadata traversal, reusing parsed sensitivity paths, and
  avoiding path construction when detecting inheritance. Effective and
  historical metadata indexes retain independently owned paths.
- Replace repeated resolution-coverage, metadata-update, CLI-overlap, and
  sensitivity-propagation scans with private indexes and incremental processing.
  Preserve diagnostic ordering, history, contextual path shapes, and redaction.
- Make presence-only metadata queries avoid materializing provenance. Prepare
  resolution replay descriptors and immutable mapping and inheritance-history
  lookups for inspection, and use ordered membership indexes for provenance
  collections. Returned records remain detached; explanations still replay
  complete trees and render on demand.
- Add a maintained public-API startup construction benchmark. The initial path
  formatting and metadata traversal experiments reproduced allocation reductions
  across local and downstream workloads. Later algorithmic improvements were
  validated behaviorally without a new benchmark campaign. Busy-host timings
  were inconclusive; no fixed speedup or allocation threshold is promised.
- Replace ConfigKit-owned release scripts with a small profile and the
  module-selected ReleaseKit v0.3.0 tool. The
  [release procedure](../release.md) documents candidate preparation, tag-only
  publication, and failed-push recovery. Existing release checks and the
  successful-tag-push completion point remain unchanged; CI is not a gate.
- Adopt release policy 1.6, distinguishing the consumer Go minimum from the
  validation toolchain. Retire completed planning and measurement records into
  Git history while preserving [performance candidates](../roadmap/future.md#5-performance-experiments).

## Compatibility and upgrade

The consumer minimum increases from Go 1.25.0 to **Go 1.26.0**. Install Go 1.26.0
or newer before upgrading, and update application build and CI environments that
still use Go 1.25. The `go.mod` directive records the consumer minimum; using a
newer validation patch does not itself raise that minimum. See the
[consumer minimum policy](../policy/release.md#consumer-minimum-and-release-toolchain).

Select this version and rebuild:

```sh
go get gitea.maximumdirect.net/eric/ConfigKit@v0.6.0
```

No application-code or configuration migration is required from v0.5.0. Public
Go signatures, strict within-tier composition, recursive tier precedence,
sibling inheritance, presence/null distinctions, provenance, secret handling,
and synchronous completion retain their existing contracts. See the
[configuration contract](../config.md) and
[consumer guide](../consumers/README.md).

The YAML dependency remains `go.yaml.in/yaml/v4 v4.0.0-rc.6`. ReleaseKit is a
declared Go tool dependency for maintainer commands, not a library runtime
import; its requirements participate in ConfigKit's module graph. Linux amd64
and arm64 remain release-validated targets, and macOS remains best-effort.
Maintainers should use the current release procedure instead of the retired
`scripts/release.sh` and `scripts/release-check.sh` commands.

[COPYRIGHT](https://gitea.maximumdirect.net/eric/ConfigKit/src/tag/v0.6.0/COPYRIGHT) | [LICENSE](https://gitea.maximumdirect.net/eric/ConfigKit/src/tag/v0.6.0/LICENSE) | [ATTRIBUTION](https://gitea.maximumdirect.net/eric/ConfigKit/src/tag/v0.6.0/docs/oss/attribution.md)