zulip/docs/subsystems/release-checklist.md

# Zulip server release checklist

This document has reminders of things one might forget to do when
preparing a new release.

### A week before the release

* Upgrade all Python dependencies in `requirements` to latest
  upstream versions so they can burn in (use `pip list --outdated`).
* Update all the strings on Transifex and notify translators that they
  should translate the new strings to get them in for the next
  release.
* Update `changelog.md` with major changes going into the release.
* Create a burndown list of bugs that need to be fixed before we can
  release, and make sure all of them are being worked on.
* Draft the release blog post (aka the release notes.)

### Final release preparation

* Update `changelog.md` with any changes since the last update, and
  with revisions from the draft blog post.
* Download updated translation strings from Transifex and commit them.
* Use `build-release-tarball` to generate a release tarball.
* Test the new tarball extensively, both new install and upgrade from last
  release, on both Trusty and Xenial.
* Repeat until release is ready.
* When near finished: move the blog post draft to Ghost.  (For a draft
  in Dropbox Paper, use "··· > Download > Markdown" to get a pretty
  good markup conversion.)  Proofread the post, especially for
  formatting.

### Executing the release

* Do final updates to `changelog.md`, for any final changes and with
  any revisions from the draft blog post.  (And the date!)
* Update `ZULIP_VERSION` in `version.py`.
* Update `version` and/or `release` in `docs/conf.py` (ReadTheDocs meta tags).
* Use `build-release-tarball` to generate a final release tarball.
* Post the release tarball on https://www.zulip.org/dist/releases/ :
  add the file, update the `zulip-server-latest.tar.gz` symlink, and
  add to SHA256SUMS.txt.
* Create a Git tag and push the tag.
* Post the release on GitHub, using the text from `changelog.md`.
* Publish the blog post.
* Email zulip-announce, and send a tweet.
* For a major release: submit blog post to aggregators.

### Post-release

* Push the release commit to master, if applicable (typically for a
  major release); otherwise, make sure any last changes make it back
  to master.
* Update `ZULIP_VERSION` in `version.py` and `release` in
 `docs/conf.py` to e.g. `1.6.0+git`.
* Update the handful of places where we link to docs for the latest
  release, rather than for master.  See `git grep 'zulip.readthedocs.io/en/[0-9]'`.
* Consider removing a few old releases from ReadTheDocs.