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+# Releasing
+
+This summarises what 'releasing' means for ybd - it's a work-in-progress. 
+
+### Past
+
+In the first months there were no 'releases' of ybd. The early goals of the
+project were to parse definitions as fast as possible, then build them, then
+deploy them.
+
+No automated tests were produced because
+- the project aimed (and still aims) to have as little code as possible
+- upstream wanted to shoe that reliable software can be written without tests
+- it was possible to test ybd on actual definitions
+
+### Present
+
+Currently the process is light-weight but ad-hoc:
+
+- ybd has no automated tests, so
+- changes are assumed to be tested by their creators
+- pull requests are typically merged with little or no upstream review/testing
+- breakages are discovered post-merge, typically by
+- a full run of ybd on ci.morph x86_64 and/or arm7lhf
+- broken changes to ybd are reverted (or sometimes fixed)
+- Pep8 is applied post-merge
+- releases are tagged periodically, usually after building ci.morph  
+
+There are some weaknesses in this:
+
+- many use-cases are not tested
+- breakages happen
+- 
+- a full build of ci.morph now takes 3 hours on a huge AWS machine
+- documentation can get out-of-step
+
+### Future
+
+Ultimately ybd releases should be as automated as possible, to make the
+process efficient (minimum work) and reliable (minimum breakage).
+
+The preferred approach for automation is expected to be Concourse.
+
+
+### Some Test Cases
+
+- build old releases of definitions, as far back as possible
+- build with empty, partial and full cache
+- verify reproducible components are still the same
+- verify installation works, on
+  - Vagrant
+  - AWS
+  - Fedora
+  - Debian/Ubuntu