Page History

The core of the release process is the build-vote-fix cycle. Each cycle produces one release candidate. The Release Manager repeats this cycle until the community approves one release candidate, which is then finalized.

Build and stage Java and Python artifacts

Set up a few environment variables to simplify Maven commands that follow. This identifies the release candidate being built. Start with RC_NUM equal to 1 and increment it for each candidate.

RC_NUM="1"
TAG="release-${RELEASE_VERSION}-rc${RC_NUM}"

Now, create a release branch ( this step can not be skipped for minor releases):

$ cd tools
tools $ OLD_VERSION=$CURRENT_SNAPSHOT_VERSION NEW_VERSION=$RELEASE_VERSION RELEASE_CANDIDATE=$RC_NUM releasing/create_release_branch.sh

Tag the release commit:

git tag -s ${TAG} -m "${TAG}"

We now need to do several things:

• Create the source release archive
• Deploy jar artefacts to the Apache Nexus Repository, which is the staging area for deploying the jars to Maven Central
• Build PyFlink wheel packages (since 1.11)

You might want to create a directory on your local machine for collecting the various source and binary releases before uploading them. Creating the binary releases is a lengthy process but you can do this on a another machine (for example, in the "cloud"). When doing this, you can skip signing the release files on the remote machine, download them to your local machine and sign them there.

First, we build the source release:

tools $ RELEASE_VERSION=$RELEASE_VERSION releasing/create_source_release.sh

Next, we stage the maven artifacts:

tools $ releasing/deploy_staging_jars.sh

Review all staged artifacts (https://repository.apache.org/). They should contain all relevant parts for each module, including pom.xml, jar, test jar, source, test source, javadoc, etc. Carefully review any new artifacts.

Close the staging repository on Apache Nexus. When prompted for a description, enter “Apache Flink, version X, release candidate Y”.

Then, you need to build the PyFlink wheel packages.(since 1.11) 

1. Set up an azure pipeline in your own Azure account. You can refer to Azure Pipelines for more details on how to set up azure pipeline for a fork of the Flink repository. Note that a google cloud mirror in Europe is used for downloading maven artifacts, therefore it is recommended to set your Azure organization region to Europe to speed up the downloads.

2. Push the release candidate branch to your forked personal Flink repository, e.g.

   Code Block
   language bash
   tools $ git push <remote> refs/heads/release-${RELEASE_VERSION}-rc${RC_NUM}:release-${RELEASE_VERSION}-rc${RC_NUM}

   
   

3. Trigger the Azure Pipelines manually to build the PyFlink wheel packages
   
   1. Go to your Azure Pipelines Flink project → Pipelines
   2. Click the "New pipeline" button on the top right
   3. Select "GitHub" → your GitHub Flink repository → "Existing Azure Pipelines YAML file"
   4. Select your branch → Set path to "/azure-pipelines.yaml" → click on "Continue" → click on "Variables"
   5. Then click "New Variable" button, fill the name with "MODE", and the value with "release". Click "OK" to set the variable and the "Save" button to save the variables, then back on the "Review your pipeline" screen click "Run" to trigger the build.
   6. You should now see a build where only the "CI build (release)" is running
      
4. Download the PyFlink wheel packages from the build result page after the jobs of "build_wheels mac" and "build_wheels linux" have finished.
   1. Download the PyFlink wheel packages
      1. Open the build result page of the pipeline
      2. Go to the `Artifacts` page (build_wheels linux -> 1 artifact)
      3. Click `wheel_Darwin_build_wheels mac` and `wheel_Linux_build_wheels linux` separately to download the zip files

   2. Unzip these two zip files

      Code Block
      language bash
      $ cd /path/to/downloaded_wheel_packages $ unzip wheel_Linux_build_wheels\ linux.zip $ unzip wheel_Darwin_build_wheels\ mac.zip

      
      

   3. Create directory `dist` under the directory of flink-python

      Code Block
      language bash
      $ cd <flink-dir> $ mkdir flink-python/dist

      
      

   4. Move the unzipped wheel packages to the directory of flink-python/dist

      Code Block
      language bash
      $ mv /path/to/wheel_Darwin_build_wheels\ mac/* flink-python/dist/ $ mv /path/to/wheel_Linux_build_wheels\ linux/* flink-python/dist/ $ cd tools

      
      

Finally, we create the binary convenience release files:

tools $ RELEASE_VERSION=$RELEASE_VERSION releasing/create_binary_release.sh

If you want to run this step in parallel on a remote machine you have to make the release commit available there (for example by pushing to a repository). This is important: the commit inside the binary builds has to match the commit of the source builds and the tagged release commit. When building remotely, you can skip gpg signing by setting  SKIP_GPG=true. You would then sign the files manually after downloading them to your machine:

for f in flink-*-bin*.tgz; do gpg --armor --detach-sig $f; done

gpg --armor --detach-sig apache-flink-*.tar.gz

The release manager need to make sure the PyPI project `apache-flink` and `apache-flink-libraries` has enough available space for the python artifacts. The remaining space must be larger than the size of `tools/releasing/release/python`. Login with the PyPI admin account (account info is only available to PMC members) and check the remaining space in project settings. 

Request an increase if there's not enough space. Note, it could take some days for PyPI to review our request. 

Stage source and binary releases on dist.apache.org

Copy the source release to the dev repository of dist.apache.org.

1. If you have not already, check out the Flink section of the dev repository on dist.apache.org via Subversion. In a fresh directory:

   Code Block
   language bash
   svn checkout https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/flink --depth=immediates

   
   

2. Make a directory for the new release:

   Code Block
   language bash
   mkdir flink/flink-${RELEASE_VERSION}-rc${RC_NUM}

   Copy Flink source/binary distributions, hashes, and GPG signature and the python subdirectory:

   Code Block
   mv <flink-dir>/tools/releasing/release/* flink/flink-${RELEASE_VERSION}-rc${RC_NUM}

   
   

3. Add and commit all the files.

   Code Block
   language bash
   cd flink svn add flink-${RELEASE_VERSION}-rc${RC_NUM} svn commit -m "Add flink-${RELEASE_VERSION}-rc${RC_NUM}"

   
   

4. Verify that files are present

(Push the release tag)

If you haven't pushed the release tag yet, here's the command:

git push <remote> refs/tags/release-${RELEASE_VERSION}-rc${RC_NUM}

Propose a pull request for website updates

The final step of building the candidate is to propose a website pull request containing the following changes:

• update _config.yml (in the root directory of flink-web)
  docs/data/flink.yml
  
  • Add a new major version or update minor version update FLINK_VERSION_STABLE and FLINK_VERSION_STABLE_SHORT as required
  • update version references in quickstarts (q/ directory) as required (major only) add a new entry to flink_releases for the release binaries and sources
  • (minor only) update the entry for the previous release in the series in flink_releases
    • Please pay notice to the ids assigned to the download entries. They should be unique and reflect their corresponding version number.
  • add a new entry to release_archive.flinkoutdated?)
• add a blog post announcing the release in _posts
• add a organized release notes page under docs/content/release-notes and docs/content.zh/release-notes (like https://nightlies.apache.org/flink/flink-docs-release-1.15/release-notes/flink-1.15/). The page is based on the non-empty release notes collected from the issues, and only the issues that affect existing users should be included (e.g., instead of new functionality). It should be in a separate PR since it would be merged to the flink project. 

Don’t merge the PRs before finalizing the release.

Checklist to proceed to the next step

1. Maven artifacts deployed to the staging repository of repository.apache.org
2. Source distribution deployed to the dev repository of dist.apache.org
3. Website pull request proposed to list the release
4. (major only) Check docs/config.toml to ensure that
   • the version constants refer to the new version
   • the baseurl does not point to flink-docs-master  but flink-docs-release-X.Y instead

You can (optionally) also do additional verification by:

1. Check hashes (e.g. shasum -c *.sha512)

2. Check signatures (e.g. gpg --verify flink-1.2.3-source-release.tar.gz.asc flink-1.2.3-source-release.tar.gz)
3. grep for legal headers in each file.
4. If time allows check the NOTICE files of the modules whose dependencies have been changed in this release in advance, since the license issues from time to time pop up during voting. See Verifying a Flink Release "Checking License" section.