DRAFT: How to Release

From time to time, Impala creates releases. These are tarballs of the Impala source that follow the rules below.

Decisions about releases are made by four groups:

1. A Release Manager, who must be a committer, does the work of creating the release, signing it, counting votes, and so on.
2. The community, who share in the discussion of whether it is the right time to create a release and what that release should contain. The community can also cast non-binding votes on the release.
3. The PMC, who votes on the release.
4. While Impala is incubating, the Incubator PMC also votes on the release

This page describes the procedures that the release manager and voting PMC members take during release time.

Release Manager

Release managers are self-selected

1. Propose a release on the dev@ list.
2. Get yourself a code signing key
3. Add yourself to the Apache Web-of-Trust by meeting face-to-face with a person so they can sign your key.
   1. Upload your new signed key
4. Make a new branch off of master called "branch-x.y.z", where x.y.z is the version you want to release
5. Test it.
6. Make a tarball and add it to dev/ with SVN. Also add your signature, as well as md5 and sha1 checksums

PMC member

1. Download the tarball. Check the signature and the checksums.
2. Test it 
3. Check compliance with ASF release policy
4. Vote