Making Releases

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Getting Ready

Useful Resources

Incubator release best practice
Incubator Policy
ASF Developer Guide
ASF Release FAQ
ASF Release Licensing FAQ
ASF Release Signing
ASF Comitters Guide
Henk's ASF Key Guide
Surfnet Key Server
MIT Key Server
Raymond's release script

Release Reviewer Check List

Check that all RELEASE-NOTES and READMEs etc have the right release number and date
Check that the RAT output doesn't report missing or non-ASF licenses other than for files that can't have ASF licenses.
Check that all files (that need it) have the ASF copyright and it's the right date
Check that the LICENSE and NOTICE files appear at the top level of source distro
Check that the LICENSE and NOTICE files appear at the top level of binary distro
Check that the LICENSE and NOTICE files appear at the top level of all maven modules that will be distributed (these are the tricky ones as they get copied when people add new modules)
Check that LICENSE files have a copy of all third party licenses for the files in directories below them (jar name and version to which license relates must be clearly marked. Use the list from the distribution lib dir)
Check that NOTICE files have a copy of all of the copyright statements for the files in directories below them. You have to go through all dependency jars/files that have been copied in and check
Check that the signatures are in the right format
Check that the signing key is in the KEYS file and in an external repo
Check that there are no SNAPSHOT dependencies still in the distribution
Check that there is no junk left in the distributions (.log, .tmp, .bak etc)
Check that the distribution match the tag as far as possible. (Our NOTICE files have the module name dropped in automatically so don't match and we don't ship svg files)
Check that the manifests in the jars that we produce have enough information (name of product and version. Scripts below should do this).
Check that the project depends on the smallest number of versions of each third party jar
Check that all samples compile and run from the command line and where appropriate operate correctly in Tomcat/WebSphere/Jetty/Geronimo
Check that all demos compile and run from the command line and where appropriate operate correctly in Tomcat/WebSphere/Jetty/Geronimo
Check to make sure Javadocs are generated for APIs and SPIs.

Release Manager Release Process

This page borrows many of the commands from Raymond's release script but with a bit more explanation and a few extra useful commands. The commands here were taken from when release 1.1 RC3a was under preparation. Note that this document has been updated from experience gained with the SDO 1.1.1 release, which was the first release made after exiting incubation; as such, whilst the release names used in this document refer to an "incubating" version, the svn repository and the maven repository have been updated to the non incubating versions. It's also fair to say that it's unlikely that you will want to run all of these commands in sequence as you generally end up repeating sections as release preparation progresses.

Call for release

At some point someone in the community will call for a release based on the features and fixes that have been under development in the trunk. Typically the first stage in the release process is to decide on who is going to be the release manager, i.e. who is going to ensure that all the steps are taken to ensure a good release. This will typical involve someone volunteering and a vote on the dev list. The next thing is the create a branch where the code can be stabilized and testing can start on the release artifacts. It's useful to try and ensure that the code is complete as possible and that all the samples run before the branch is created. This removes the need for a lot of double fixing between the branch and the trunk.

Create the branch

svn copy https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/tuscany/sca-java-2.x/trunk/ https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/tuscany/sca-java-2.x/branches/sca-java-2.<x>-M<y>  -m "Branch for 2.<x> Milestone <y>"