release-process.adoc

Release process

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To create a new release of aktualizr and garage-deploy, there are several discrete steps to follow:

• 1. Update the changelog and other docs
• 2. Pull in any new changes from the current docs branch
• 3. Create a new tag
  • 3.1. Updating an already-released tag
• 4. Create a new docs branch
  • 4.1. Update version strings in antora.yml for old and new branch
• 5. Update doxygen on github
• 6. Update the description of the github release
• 7. Verify the released Debian packages
• 8. Update meta-updater

1. Update the changelog and other docs

This is normally a good time to update the changelog. Ideally, the changelog should be updated with the new release number before creating the release so that the packaged source code includes the correct information about the release. The easiest way to check the changelog is to review all PRs merged to master since the last release was made and to verify that any important changes that impact the user experience are reflected in the changelog.

There are a few additional documents that should be updated to refer to the new release:

• The docs README contains a table with links to the doxygen docs for each release.

• Several pages contains references to the latest release of aktualizr and/or garage-deploy via a variable set in a doc snippet created for this purpose.

This is also a good time to review the docs in general and to consider whether any changes in this release might have affected the docs.

2. Pull in any new changes from the current docs branch

The docs published as latest in the OTA Connect Developer Guide are built from the most recent release’s docs branch ({version}-docs). There will very likely be changes from there that have not been pulled into master yet. Open up a PR to merge the previous release’s docs into master, resolving any merge conflicts as needed. Once that PR is merged, you can move on to the next step.

The cleanest way to do this (especially if there were multiple changes to the docs branch) is to merge the docs branch locally and then rebase on master to remove the merge commits:

git merge origin/2020.2-docs
git rebase origin/master

3. Create a new tag

Releases are built automatically by gitlab from annotated tags of the form major.minor, where major and minor are numbers. We normally set major to the current year and minor to an incrementing number beginning at 1.

To create a release, checkout the revision you want to bless, then:

git tag -as <tag>   # e.g. git tag -a 2018.4
git push github <tag>

Gitlab will build this tag and automatically create a release for it on github.

3.1. Updating an already-released tag

Generally, you should not update a tag after it has already been pushed to github. This is asking for confusion and problems down the line. However, if something goes wrong in creating the release from the tag, you may need to do this anyway. Note that you will need to manually delete the release on github if it has been created already. (Otherwise, the release’s files will not get updated.) You will then need to either retry the specific github-release step or re-trigger the entire pipeline (which can be done by re-pushing the tag to github).

4. Create a new docs branch

Create (and push to github) a new branch with the commit you just tagged as the parent:

git checkout -b <tag>-docs # e.g. git checkout -b 2019.63-docs
git push github --set-upstream <tag>-docs

4.1. Update version strings in antora.yml for old and new branch

The versioning of the docs is controlled by the antora.yml file located at docs/ota-client-guide/antora.yml. The latest version should have its version set to latest, and its display_version set to <version> (latest). That will initially make it conflict with the version in the previous docs branch; you can’t have two different branches with the same version set. To resolve this, fix the version number in antora.yml on the previous branch—​from latest to its actual version number.

So, if you’re releasing version 2020.4, your antora.yml on the two most recent branches should look like this:

2020.4-docs

name: ota-client
title: OTA Connect Developer Guide
version: latest
display_version: 2020.4 (latest)
nav:
- modules/ROOT/nav.adoc

2020.3-docs

name: ota-client
title: OTA Connect Developer Guide
version: '2020.3'
display_version: '2020.3'
nav:
- modules/ROOT/nav.adoc

5. Update doxygen on github

You will need to update the doxygen documentation both for the new release and master.

This step is now done automatically through a GitLab pipeline but you can refer to the automation script for the exact steps, in case it needs to be done manually.

The pages should be updated a few minutes after a successful release pipeline execution.

6. Update the description of the github release

Once the release is ready on github, it should be edited to include a link to the changelog and doxygen documentation for that particular release. You can use a previous release as a model of how to format these links.

7. Verify the released Debian packages

Newly created releases automatically trigger an OTF pipeline in gitlab. Currently, you still need to manually verify that the pipeline actually succeeded.

8. Update meta-updater

The version of aktualizr used by meta-updater should be updated to match the new release. First, open a PR against dunfell that updates aktualizr to the same commit used in the newly released tag. (Historically, we started with master, but we now skip straight to dunfell.) This is also a good time to update the aktualizr recipe to pull the latest version of garage-sign.

Once that PR has passed oe-selftest, successfully passed review, and gotten merged, you should then backport that change, along with anything else relevant since the last backport was done, to the other currently supported release branches. Note that while master is allowed to use arbitrary recent version of aktualizr, the release branches should only use released versions of aktualizr.