Release Process

Release Process

Managing a release is easiest in an environment that is as clean as possible. For this reason, cloning the code base in to a new directory for the release process is recommended.

Requirements

A system for git and building.
A cryptographic key that has been signed by at least two other PMC members. This should be preferentially associated with your apache.org email address but that is not required.

Release Candidate

The first step in a release is making a release candidate. This is distributed to the community for validation before the actual release.

Document

Gather up information about the changes for the release. The CHANGES file is a good starting point. You may also want to check the commits since the last release. The primary purpose of this is to generate a list of the important changes since the last release.

Create or update a page on the Wiki for the release. If it is a major or minor release it should have its own page. Use the previous release page as a template. Point releases should get a section at the end of the corresponding release page.

Write an announcement for the release. This will contain much of the same information that is on the Wiki page but more concisely. Check the mailing list archives for examples to use as a base.

Build

Go to the top level source directory.
Check the version in configure.ac. There are two values near the top that need to be set, TS_VERSION_S and TS_VERSION_N. These are the release version number in different encodings.
Check the variable RC in the top level Makefile.am. This should be the point release value. This needs to be changed for every release candidate. The first release candidate is 0 (zero).
Execute the following commands to make the distribution files.
```
autoreconf -i
./configure
make rel-candidate
```

These steps will create the distribution files and sign them using your key. Expect to be prompted twice for your passphrase unless you use an ssh key agent. If you have multiple keys you will need to set the default appropriately beforehand, as no option will be provided to select the signing key. The files should have names that start with trafficserver-X.Y.Z-rcA.tar.bz2 where X.Y.Z is the version and A is the release candidate counter. There should be four such files, one with no extension and three others with the extensions asc, md5, and sha1. This will also create a signed git tag of the form X.Y.Z-rcA.

Distribute

The release candidate files should be uploaded to some public storage. Your personal storage on people.apach.org is a reasonable location to use.

Send the release candidate announcement to the users and dev mailing lists, noting that it is a release candidate and providing a link to the distribution files you uploaded. This announcement should also call for a vote on the candidate, generally with a 72 hours time limit.

If the voting was successful (at least three “+1” votes and no “-1” votes), proceed to Official Release. Otherwise, repeat the Release Candidate process.

Official Release

Build the distribution files with the command

make release

Be sure to not have changed anything since the release candidate was built so the checksums are identical. This will create a signed git tag of the form X.Y.Z and produce the distribution files. Push the tag to the ASF repository with the command

git push origin X.Y.Z

This presumes origin is the name for the ASF remote repository which is correct if you originally clone from the ASF repository.

The distribution files must be added to an SVN repository. This can be accessed with the command:

svn co https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/trafficserver <local-directory>

All four of the distribution files go here. If you are making a point release then you should also remove the distribution files for the previous release. Allow 24 hours for the files to be distributed through the ASF infrastructure.

The Traffic Server website must be updated. This is an SVN repository which you can access with

svn co https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/trafficserver/site/trunk <local-directory>

The files of interest are in the content directory.

index.html

This is the front page. The places to edit here are any security announcements at the top and the “News” section.

downloads.en.mdtext

Update the downloads page to point to the new download objects.

After making changes, commit them and then run

publish.pl trafficserver <apache-id>

On the people.apache.org host.

If needed, update the Wiki page for the release to point at the release distribution files.

Update the announcement, if needed, to refer to the release distribution files and remove the comments concerning the release candidate. This announcement should be sent to the users and dev mailing lists. It should also be sent to the ASF announcement list, which must be done using an apache.org email address.

Finally, update various files after the release:

The STATUS file for master and for the release branch to include this version.
The CHANGES file to have a header for the next version.
configure.ac to be set to the next version.
In the top level Makefile.am change RC to have the value 0.