Release Process

There are 2 stages to the release process:

1. Normal Development
2. Release Time

Normal Development

Humans 👩‍💻

1. Create a pull request with a new feature or fix

2. Ensure the AppData contains relevant release notes in the PR

   Example:

   <release version="1.0.1" date="2019-09-25" urgency="medium">
     <description>
       <ul>
         <li>changelog contents</li>
         <li>More changelog contents</li>
       </ul>
     </description>
   </release>

3. PR is reviewed, approved, and merged

CI 🤖

1. Updates translation files when there are string changes (in-progress, not available yet)

Release Time

Humans 👩‍💻

1. Create a release PR based off of the master branch
2. Fill out the PR template:
   • Verify the versioning for the new release (i.e. if it's a x.y.patch or x.minor.z bump)
   • Verify screenshots, AppData, etc.
   • Bump the release date in AppData
   • Verify that the PR has a label called Release (should be auto-set by the PR template)
3. PR is reviewed, approved, and merged

CI 🤖

1. Updates the Debian changelog in the deb-packaging branch
2. Tags the x.y.z version on the master branch and creates a new GitHub Release
3. Tags the x.y.z-debian version on the deb-packaging branch
4. Pushes a next-version commit to master including a patch version bump in Meson and AppData
5. Merges the master branch into the user-defined stable branch (eg. juno) to enable stable launchpad builds

---

Automation Notes 📝

Triggering a GitHub Release

https://github.com/danrabbit/release-automation/releases/new?tag=v1.0.1;body=Changelog+contents

(REST API ffr: https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/releases/#create-a-release)

Triggering a Launchpad build

For elementary projects, each repo uses Launchpad recipes to create daily builds from the master git branch and stable builds from the user-defined stable git branch (e.g. juno) . So to summarize:

1. Create or fast forward a release branch (aka step 5 of automated release process)
2. Use Launchpad automatic git imports
3. Use launchpad recipes to "daily" build the release branch in the stable PPA. (But since this branch is not updated daily, it'll only build release commits)