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1. You must be a PMC member / Committer in Apache NetBeans.
2. You must have connected your Apache ID to Apache NetBeans GitHub via GitBox: https://gitbox.apache.org.
3. You must have access to https://github.com/apache/netbeans and https://github.com/apache/netbeans-jenkins-lib/.
4. You must be able to connect to Apache CI Jenkins instance builds, i.e., see 

   Jira
   server ASF JIRA serverId 5aa69414-a9e9-3523-82ec-879b028fb15b key INFRA-17082

   .
5. You must have a PGP KEY (http://www.apache.org/dev/release-distribution.html#sigs-and-sums) for which the public key must be here: https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/netbeans/KEYS.
6. You need to have sudo access to netbeans-vm1.apache.org.

Branching, builds and release candidate overview.

Two git branches are created at feature freeze for each quarterly NetBeans release. The release branch (eg. release140) is used for release candidate and release builds. Naming is important as it is picked up by the build system (the last zero is a legacy of the old version scheme). The delivery branch is used for collating fixes for the release. All pull requests intended for the release are merged to delivery, and delivery is merged to both the release branch and master branches regularly. The delivery branch is transitory and should be deleted shortly after the final release.

The release team handle all merges to delivery, and syncing to other branches. This is mainly for scheduling reasons, as well as to keep an overview of fixes / check for merge issues. A wrongly timed (eg. between syncs) or unwanted (eg. spec version changes) commit merged to delivery will likely lead to a forced reset. The release team has no more say in what actually gets merged to a release than any other committer.

Syncing from delivery to master and release branches is done via pull requests. This has a number of benefits, including running CI against both targets with every merge to delivery, easy view of all changes between release candidates, and ensuring release hashes are unique to the release branch.

It is useful for all committers if we can use the same day of the week for release candidates and syncing. This has often been a Wednesday, but is up to the member(s) of the release team managing this for any release - publicise it!

1.  Announce the feature freeze date on dev@ using [NOTICE] emails a week and a day before branching - see / adapt example.
2. Change the current milestone on all remaining open pull request to the next milestone (use bulk edit in the PR table).
3. Create the delivery and release branches from master. Announce feature freeze and branching - see / adapt example.
4. Increment module spec versions on master for the next release using ant increment-spec-versions. This should be the first commit in master after branching. See PR after NB14 branch.
5. Add the metadata about the release to netbeansrelease.json, including a milestone for rc1 using the hash from the release branch (eg. git show). This will be the last hash shared with any other branch.
6. Trigger a build for the release branch in the Jenkins NetBeansTLP job. A build may have started automatically but will likely not have picked up the latest metadata - if so, stop and restart.
7. Once the build is complete, download the source and binary zip artefacts, and check build, fixes, etc. locally. Lock the Jenkins build to stop it being cleaned up, and announce the release candidate with links to the artefacts - see / adapt example.
8. Over the following week, review and merge any inbound fixes to delivery.
9. As soon as there is any change in delivery, open two pull requests to sync branches - Sync delivery to releaseXXX for XX-rcN (see example) and Sync delivery to master after XX-rcN (see example)
10. If there are no merged fixes and no open major / critical issues for this release, consider whether it's time to move to a vote. The release voting candidate must be built off the same git hash as the last release candidate - edit the existing milestone in netbeansrelease.json.
11. If / when ready to trigger another release candidate, check and merge the sync PR to releaseXXX. Add a milestone based on the git hash of the sync PR merge commit to `netbeansrelease.json`.
12. Repeat from step 6, making sure to merge the other sync PR to master after verifying and announcing the release candidate. Do not sync to master if there are problems with the release candidate build - fix in delivery and resync / rebuild.

Preparing the Code Base and Jenkins TLP Job

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Branding will contain release information.

Producing a

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Release Candidate

1.

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Obtaining and

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preparing the

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files

On Apache Jenkins

1. You have to set up json file milestone content.
2. Go to https://builds.apache.org/job/Netbeans/job/netbeans-TLP/job/netbeans/
3. Check that the build on release<version> and verify artefacts they should be branded with beta in their name. Cancel and relaunch build otherwise
4. Wait for the job to be finished.
5. Keep the build

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sudo su -
cd /var/www/bits.netbeans.org
mkdir 11.3

2. Distributing Beta via mailing lists

1. Beta releases should be distributed directly from the Jenkins build job - eg.

Producing a Voting Candidate

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1. Obtaining and Preparing the Voting Candidate Files

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