This document describes how to release Fineract. It is a work in progress and should be refined by the Release Manager (RM) as they come across aspects of the release process not yet documented here

Give a heads up

The RM should first create list of issues/features and then setup a timeline for release branch point. The time for the day the issue list is created to the release branch point must be at least two weeks in order to give the community a chance to prioritize and commit any last minute features and issues they would like to see in the upcoming release.

The RM should then send the pointer to the umbrella issue along with the tentative timeline for branch point to the developer lists. Any work identified as release related that needs to be completed should be added as a sub task of the umbrella issue to allow users to see the overall release progress in one place.

The RM should then inform users once branch point is created.

To: dev@fineract.incubator.apache.org
Subject: Work on $release release has started
Created a tracking jira (jira#) for the Fineract $release and plan to branch tentatively on $date. 
What would you like to see included?
Thanks,
$RM

Sanitize JIRA

1. Before a release is done, make sure that any issues that are fixed have their fix version setup correctly.

   project = fineract and resolution = fixed and fixVersion is empty

2. Move the unresolved jiras to the next release

    

   project = fineract and fixVersion = 0.7.0-incubating and status not in( resolved, done, Accepted, Closed)

3. You can also run the following query to make sure that the issues fixed for the to-be-released version look accurate:

   project = fineract and fixVersion = '0.7.0-incubating'

4. Finally, check out the output of the JIRA release note tool to see which JIRAs are included in the release, in order to do a sanity check.

Creating Release Artifacts

Communicate with the community

1.  Send an email to developer mailing list(dev@fineract.incubator.apache.org) to notify that you are about to branch. Ask to hold off any commits until this is finished.
2. Send another email after branching is done.

Preparing branches

1. Create a release branch

   1. Clone fresh repository copy

      git clone https://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator-fineract.git
      cd incubator-fineract

   2.  Check that current HEAD points to commit on which you want to base new  release branch. Checkout particular commit if not.
      

       

      git log # Check current branch history. HEAD should point to commit that you want to be base for your release branch

   3. Create a new release branch with name "$Version"

      % git checkout -b 0.7.0-incubating

   4. Add new release notes in Release Folders
      The change list can be swiped from the JIRA release note tool (use the "text" format for the change log). See JIRA Cleanup above to ensure that the release notes generated by this tool are what you are expecting.
   5.