[BugFix] Restore torchrl-nightly PyPI uploads

[vmoens]

What's broken

torchrl-nightly on PyPI has been stale since 2025.9.1. The scheduled nightly workflow builds and tests wheels every day and shows green, but every PyPI upload job fails; continue-on-error: true masks it (see e.g. this scheduled run - all 15 upload jobs red, run green).

Two upload blockers:

1. Local version identifiers. Nightly wheels are versioned e.g. 2026.6.9+ga1a1070: setup.py appends +g<sha> to the date written by build_nightly.sh. PyPI rejects any PEP 440 local version with 400: The use of local versions in '2026.6.9+ga1a1070' is not allowed.
2. Platform tag. [BugFix] Old/Opt deps fixes #3799 dropped the linux_x86_64 -> manylinux1_x86_64 wheel rename, and PyPI rejects plain linux_x86_64 wheels, so Linux uploads would keep failing even with the version fixed (the last published nightlies were manylinux1_x86_64).

Two masking bugs let this rot silently:

3. continue-on-error: true on the upload jobs keeps scheduled runs green when uploads fail.
4. torchrl.__version__ is None in nightly wheels: the distribution is named torchrl-nightly but torchrl/__init__.py only queries torchrl, and no _version.py fallback is generated since setuptools_scm is not installed in the nightly build env. packaging/verify_nightly_version.py treats a missing version as a warning and passes, so the +g<sha> version sailed through the test job instead of failing it.

Fixes

• build_nightly.sh: export TORCHRL_BUILD_VERSION="$(date +%Y.%m.%d)". setup.py uses this override verbatim, so the wheel version is the plain (normalized) date with no local suffix. Dev builds from source keep the +g<sha> behavior.
• .github/workflows/nightly_build.yml: restore the manylinux1 rename (with the original rationale comment, matching what pytorch/pytorch binaries do) and drop continue-on-error from the two upload jobs so a failed upload turns the run red.
• torchrl/__init__.py: fall back to the torchrl-nightly distribution name so nightly wheels report a real __version__.
• packaging/verify_nightly_version.py: a missing/empty __version__ is now a hard failure instead of a warning-skip.

Validation

• set_version() exercised locally: with TORCHRL_BUILD_VERSION=2026.06.10 the build version is 2026.06.10 (no local part, normalizes to 2026.6.10 which is what the verify script expects); without the override the dev path is unchanged (0.13.0+g<sha>).
• The rename find command verified against dummy wheel filenames (linux wheel renamed to manylinux1, macos wheel untouched).
• The build/test halves of nightly_build.yml run on this PR's own CI (pull_request trigger); the upload path gets exercised by the next 15:15 UTC scheduled run.

Note: the Nightly Orchestrator's scheduled runs are currently cancelled every day (separate concurrency issue, not addressed here), but nightly_build.yml has its own 15:15 UTC schedule that uploads independently, so nightlies resume regardless.

Generated with Claude Code

[pytorch-bot]

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