zulip/docs/subsystems/release-checklist.md

1.9 KiB

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  • Upgrade all Python dependencies in requirements to latest upstream versions so they can burn in (use pip list --outdated).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.

Final release preparation

  • Update changelog.md with any final changes since the last update.
  • Draft the release notes; see previous zulip-announce emails for the tooling needed.
  • 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.

Executing the release

  • Do final updates to changelog.md.
  • 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 zulip.org and update zulip.org.
  • Add the sha256sum of the release to the file SHA256SUMS.txt in https://www.zulip.org/dist/releases/
  • Create a git tag and push the tag.
  • Upload the release on GitHub so it doesn't provide a broken release tarball.
  • Email zulip-announce with the release notes
  • For a major release, post on the blog, tweet, etc.

Post-release

  • Update ZULIP_VERSION in version.py to e.g. 1.6.0+git. Also update docs/conf.py.
  • Consider removing a few old releases from ReadTheDocs.