How to release a project

Recording

There is a recording captured on 2020/06/22 which is complementary to this documentation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/131rkTO8lk8J0NSqqO4hkBEqySzlkX3TM/view

Ensure GitHub workflows

If you won’t add the project to giantswarm/github, make sure GitHub workflows for creating releases exist and are up to date:

1. Install the newest version of devctl with GO111MODULE=on go get github.com/giantswarm/devctl.
2. Go to the top level of the git repository and run devctl gen workflows.
3. Create a PR with changes in .github/workflows/ directory. This PR can be merged without approval.

After it’s merged, workflows used to create release PR and create git tag and GitHub release are all set up.

Create release PR

Once workflows are ready, it is time to create release branch. The name of the branch is important and it must follow this convention:

${BASE}#release#${VERSION}

Where:

• BASE - is the name of the base branch for release PR. Usually it is master or main.
• VERSION - either major, minor, patch or a specific version v1.2.3 that is going to be created for the release.

Example:

git checkout main
git pull origin main
git checkout -b main#release#v1.2.3
git push origin main#release#v1.2.3

It is also possible to create the branch using the GitHub UI

After a while (around 1 minute) there should be a release PR created for the branch and you should be assigned. This PR will update CHANGELOG.md file and if it exists project.go file. There should be not extra work required for this PR apart from requesting reviewers.

If there are new commits in BASE branch that you want to integrate you can simply merge into the release branch or rebase it and push:

git checkout main#release#v1.2.3

# merge
git merge main
git push

# or rebase
git rebase main
git push --force

If something goes wrong you can always delete the branch in origin and push it again:

# delete the branch / close PR
git push --delete origin main#release#v1.2.3

# if you need to refresh it
git checkout main#release#v1.2.3
git reset --hard main

# push it again
git push origin main#release#v1.2.3

Merge the release PR

After the release PR is merged, there will be a git tag and GitHub release created automatically by the GitHub workflow.

Check CI for success

The CI will take care of building and deploying this new version to all installations. The full architecture diagram for CI process can be found here.

Check that CI workflow executes successfully, e.g. https://circleci.com/gh/giantswarm/aws-operator

You should get something like this:

At this point, an operator with version v6.42.0 should be installed in all MCs.

Craft a new release if needed

If the released App is a unique App then no further action is needed. It should be deployed to specific provider installations once CI successfully finishes the tag build.

If this App is a part of Giant Swarm release, then a new release needs to be created. Details can be found here.