This is the process to follow to make a new release. This should really be automated someday, but releases are juuuust infrequent enough that it’s less annoying to just do the work each time.
Are you actually ready to release? Check the milestone on github and verify that all its issues are closed. If there are open issues, you’ll have to either resolve them, or bump to the next version.
MetalLB uses release branches to track releases. Relevant commits should be cherry-picked onto the release branch. For example:
git checkout v0.9
git cherry-pick -x f1f86ed658c1e8a6f90f967ed94881d61476b4c0
git push
All release notes are always written on the main branch, and
copied into release branches in a later step. Point out all new
features and actions required by users. If there are very notable
bugfixes (e.g. security issues, long-term pain point resolved), point
those out as well.
Also update the documentation link so that the soon-to-be latest
release’s documentation link points to metallb.universe.tf, and the
previous releases point to vX-Y-Z--metallb.netlify.com, which is the
website pinned at that tagged release.
To get a list of contributors to the release, run git log
--format="%aN" $(git merge-base CUR-BRANCH PREV-TAG)..CUR-BRANCH | sort -u |
tr '\n' ',' | sed -e 's/,/, /g'. CUR-BRANCH is main if you’re
making a minor release (e.g. 0.9.0), or the release branch for the
current version if you’re making a patch release (e.g. v0.8 if
you’re making v0.8.4). PREV-TAG is the release tag name for the
last release (e.g. if you’re preparing 0.8.4, PREV-TAG is
v0.8.3. Also think about whether there were significant
contributions that weren’t in the form of a commit, and include those
people as well. It’s better to err on the side of being too
thankful!
Commit the finalized release notes.
The release script only works if the Git working directory is completely clean: no pending modifications, no untracked files, nothing. Make sure everything is clean, or run the release from a fresh checkout.
The release script will abort if the working directory isn’t right.
Run inv release X.Y.Z. This will create the appropriate branches,
commits and tags in your local repository.
Run git push --tags origin main vX.Y. This will push all pending
changes both in main and the release branch, as well as the new tag
for the release.
For major and minor releases, the release script created a new vX.Y
branch. Go into github’s repository settings and mark the branch
protected, including from administrators, to guard against accidental
force pushes.
By default, new tags show up de-emphasized in the list of releases. Create a new release attached to the tag you just pushed. Make the description point to the release notes on the website.
When you pushed, CircleCI kicked off a set of image builds for the new tag. You need to wait for these images to be pushed live before continuing, because the manifests for the new release point to image tags that don’t exist until CircleCI makes them exist.
Check on Quay for a vX.Y.Z tag on each image, or check on
CircleCI that the deploy has completed.
Move the live-website branch to the newly created tag with git
branch -f live-website vX.Y.Z, then force-push the branch with git
push -f origin live-website. This will trigger Netlify to
redeploy metallb.universe.tf with
updated documentation for the new version.
Update the topic in #metallb on Kubernetes slack.
Tweet, post to G+, slack, IRC, whatever. Make some noise, if it’s worth making noise about!