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Steps of the Release Process

Three types of releases are expected to occur:
  • major
  • minor
  • patch

See the :file:`CONTRIBUTING.md` file for information on how to contribute features and patches. See the :file:`docs/review_process.rst` for information about how to, and what is involved in, reviewing contributions.

The following process should apply when any release that changes the version number occurs.

Create and Merge Version Update Branch

This step of the release process depends on whether the release is considered to be major or minor, or if it is a patch release.

Major and Minor Releases

Major and minor releases may add one or more trivial or non-trivial features and functionalities.

  1. Create a new branch off of the main named something like update-to-v{NEW_VERSION}, where NEW_VERSION is the new X.Y version.

    1. Use the scripts/update_release_notes.sh script to update the project version number, create docs/release_notes/v{NEW_VERSION}.rst, and add a new pending release notes stub file.

      $ # When creating a major release
$ ./scripts/update_release_notes.sh major
$ # OR when creating a minor release
$ ./scripts/update_release_notes.sh minor

    2. Add a descriptive paragraph under the title section of docs/release_notes/v{NEW_VERSION}.rst summarizing this release.

  2. Push the created branch to the upstream repository, not your fork (this is an exception to the normal forking workflow).

  3. Create a pull/merge request for this branch with release as the merge target. This is to ensure that everything passes CI testing before making the release. If there is an issue, then topic branches should be made and merged into this branch until the issue is resolved.

  4. Get an approving review.

  5. Merge the pull/merge request into the release branch.

  6. Tag the resulting merge commit. See Tag new version below for how to do this.

  7. As a repository administrator, merge the release branch into main locally and push the updated main to upstream. (Replace "upstream" in the example below with your applicable remote name.)

    $ git fetch --all
$ git checkout upstream/main
$ git merge --log --no-ff upstream/release
$ git push upstream main

  8. Draft a new release on GitLab for the new version.

Patch Release

A patch release should only contain fixes for bugs or issues with an existing release. No new features or functionality should be introduced in a patch release. As such, patch releases should only ever be based on an existing release point (git tag).

This list assumes we are creating a new patch release off of the latest release version, i.e. off of the release branch. If a patch release for an older release version is being created, see the Patching an Older Release section.

  1. Create a new branch off of the release branch named something like update-to-v{NEW_VERSION}, where NEW_VERSION is the target X.Y.Z, including the bump in the patch (Z) version component.

    1. Use the scripts/update_release_notes.sh script to update the project version number, create docs/release_notes/v{NEW_VERSION}.rst, and add a new pending release notes stub file.

      $ ./scripts/update_release_notes.sh patch

    2. Add a descriptive paragraph under the title section of docs/release_notes/v{NEW_VERSION}.rst summarizing this release.

  2. Push the created branch to the upstream repository, not your fork (this is an exception to the normal forking workflow).

  3. Create a pull/merge request for this branch with release as the merge target. This is to ensure that everything passes CI testing before making the release. If there is an issue, then topic branches should be made and merged into this branch until the issue is resolved.

  4. Get an approving review.

  5. Merge the pull/merge request into the release branch.

  6. Tag the resulting merge commit. See Tag new version below for how to do this.

  7. As a repository administrator, merge the release branch into main locally and push the updated main to upstream. (Replace "upstream" in the example below with your applicable remote name.)

    $ git fetch --all
$ git checkout upstream/main
$ git merge --log --no-ff upstream/release
$ git push upstream main

  8. Draft a new release on GitLab for the new version.

Patching an Older Release

When patching a major/minor release that is not the latest version, a branch needs to be created based on the release version being patched to integrate the specific patches into. This branch should be prefixed with release- to denote that it is a release integration branch, e.g. release-v1.2.19 (where 19 is the incremented patch version number). Patch topic-branches should be based on this release-... branch. When all fix branches have been integrated, follow the Patch Release section above, replacing release branch references (merge target) to be the release-... integration branch. Step 6 should be to merge this release integration branch into release first, and then release into main, if applicable (some exceptional patches may only make sense for specific versions and don't warrant integration into upstream main).

Tag New Version

Release branches are tagged in order to record where in the git tree a particular release refers to. All release tags should be in the history of the release and main branches (barring exceptional circumstances).

We prefer to use local git tag commands to create the release version tag, pushing the tag to upstream. The version tag should be applied to the merge commit resulting from the above described update-to-v{NEW_VERSION} topic-branch ("the release").

See the example commands below, replacing HASH with the appropriate git commit hash, and UPSTREAM with the appropriate remote name. We also show how to use Poetry's version command to consistently access the current, just-updated package version.

$ git checkout HASH
$ VERSION="v$(poetry version -s)"
$ git tag -a "$VERSION" -F docs/release_notes/"$VERSION".rst
$ git push UPSTREAM "$VERSION"

Draft a New Release on GitLab

After creating and pushing a new version tag, a GitLab "release" should be made.

  1. Navigate to the GitLab Releases page for the nrtk repository.
  2. Click the "Create a new release" button (or go here).
  3. Select from the "Tag name" dropdown the tag version just created and pushed
  4. Enter the version number as the title, e.g. "v1.2.3".
  5. Select the release date.
  6. Copy and paste the release notes for this version into the release notes field.
  7. Click the "Create Release" button to create the GitLab release!

In the future, this may be automated. See the appropriate GitLab documentation for more details.