1 GStreamer Release Policies (or: why we should become a country and pass laws)
2 --------------------------
6 Development period is marked by having a fourth (nano) version number of 1.
7 During development anything goes short of wiping the tree.
8 Just try doing a few basic things :
9 - make sure it builds for you !
10 - check what you're about to commit with cvs -Q diff -r
11 - preferably, keep an anonymous checkout around as well so you can
12 immediately update and check if your changes work in a clean tree as well
16 After a bit of development, people want a new release. This generally happens
18 - core developers get anxious to apply massive changes to the core bound
20 - a few important plugins decide, as if by magic, to work again (avi, mad, ...)
21 - thaytan or thomasvs get tired of being lazy.
23 Also, this should only be allowed after passing a few sanity checks :
24 - make distcheck should pass
26 - FIXME: should debs be built here ? If so, how ?
28 At this time, we need to do a few prereleases for general checking by all
29 interested developers. To minimize the impact on the rest of the core hacking,
30 we create a new CVS branch which will go through the pre-releases and finally
31 contain the definitive tarball for that version.
36 - www/bin/new-release is a release helper script. It automates a lot of the
37 tedious work. Now releasing looks like this:
40 - make sure all blocker bugs for that release are fixed or deferred
41 - make sure you have a local copy of all online files
42 - run 'make download-po' to make sure translations in CVS are up-to-date,
43 and then 'make update-po' in po/ (which will update the .pot template too
44 and merge the changes into the .po files)
45 - Make one or more prereleases
46 - Make sure you've got the latest clean CVS of the module
47 - Run bin/data-get in www/ to sync data from website
48 - Bump the nano number to > 2 (eg, first pre-release for
50 - When releasing -base/-good/-ugly/-bad/gnonlin, make sure GST_REQ and
51 GST_PBREQ are up-to-date. In particular, keep GST_REQ of the
52 to-be-released -base module in sync with the core version that is to
53 be released at the same time
54 - Re-autogen if not in maintainer-mode (which you should be)
55 - Update the changelog
56 python common/gen-changelog.py > ChangeLog
57 - Check (and fix if necessary) make distcheck
58 - run 'make release' to build the tarballs
59 - copy tarballs+md5 sums to the data/src/$module/pre/ dir
60 - Run bin/data-put in www/ to sync the new tarballs to the website
61 - Announce the availability of the new tarballs
62 - Tell the translation project by sending an email to
63 coordinator@translationproject.org, eg:
64 Subject: gst-plugins-bad-0.10.5.2.pot available
65 Tarball is at http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/src/gst-plugins-bad/pre/gst-plugins-bad-0.10.5.2.tar.bz2
67 - prepare the release:
68 - Make sure your www is up to date: Run bin/data-get in www/
69 - Update the doap file to insert the new release info
70 - bin/new-release (module) (version) (checkoutdir) (release name)
72 - allows you to update versioning in configure.ac
75 - adds a new releases/module/version.xml file and lets you edit
76 --> here you add/fix up the features (from ChangeLog) and check
78 - allows you to update NEWS file with snippets from RELEASE
80 - rebuilds docs for plugins
81 - rolls release tarballs and puts them in the local www/data tree
82 - uploads docs to website
83 - commits changes to po files
84 - shows you a diff for evaluation
86 - build packages to test
89 - cvs commit in the tree
91 for example for 0.6.3 :
93 - bump nano number in configure.ac, commit
94 - if working in the "stable" release branch, update to this tag to freeze it:
95 cvs up -r RELEASE-0_6_3
96 - sync source and packages to website
97 + run /bin/data-put in www
98 - change versions in www/src/htdocs/entities.gst
99 - add entry on website
100 + Edit src/htdocs/news/news.xml and add a new item at the bottom.
101 - commit additions to website
102 - add versions and milestones in bugzilla
103 - upload new core, -base and -good tarballs to gnome ftp
105 scp gstreamer-0.10.42.tar.gz master.gnome.org:
107 install-module gstreamer-0.10.42.tar.gz
109 - Send release announcements to:
110 gstreamer-devel@lists.sourceforge.net gstreamer-announce@lists.sourceforge.net kde-multimedia@kde.org gnome-multimedia@gnome.org
111 - Update freshmeat with new releases (get Uraeus to do it)
113 Old release notes - superseded by the www/bin/new-release script.
114 ----------------------------------------------------------------
117 - Decide on the next version number (major, minor or micro upgrade ?)
118 - Get a fresh copy to do the necessary tests on
119 - If this isn't on the stable branch (like for 0.6), then create a new branch;
120 - with 0.3.3 as an example, tag is BRANCH-RELEASE-0_3_3
121 cvs tag BRANCH-RELEASE-0_3_3-ROOT
122 cvs tag -b BRANCH-RELEASE-0_3_3
123 - update your local copy to the branch:
124 cvs update -r BRANCH-RELEASE-0_3_3
125 - Set the nano to 2 (in configure.ac, AS_VERSION)
126 - If this is a release candidate for a new major version, override
127 MAJOR/MINOR in configure.ac
128 - Do all updates/patches/changes for the release tarball in this branch
129 - Think of a good codename for the release
130 - Check the bug lists:
131 - The idea is to have all bugs for this milestone listed as fixed
132 - Check all of the bug reports with this version as a milestone, and verify
133 that these bugs are fixed, or reassign to a later milestone if not
134 - Check later milestone bugs, and if any of them are fixed, reassign to
136 - Check the list of bugs resolved with milestone HEAD, which should be
137 assigned to an actual milestone
138 - create a new $(version).xml file in www/src/htdocs/releases/$(module)
140 - Start updating the release notes on the www cvs tree
141 - create the base xml file in www/htdocs/releases/$/module)/$(version).xml
142 - grepping ChangeLog for contributors:
143 grep "<.*>" ChangeLog | perl -i -p -e 's@\d*-\d*-\d*\s*(.*)\s*<.*$@$1@' | sort | uniq
144 - use www/bin/bugzilla (module) (version) to get an xml list of the
145 bugs fixed in this version, and add it to the release .xml
146 - depending on how the API has changed update the libtool versioning
147 in configure.ac, AS_LIBTOOL
148 (Look at the libtool info page about versioning for guidelines)
149 (if MAJOR/MINOR version has changed, however, you can reset all to 0)
150 - FIXME: autotools have latest config.{guess,sub}
151 This is needed in order to support newer platforms.
152 On Debian install the autotools-dev package to get these.
153 Someone please add some more useful info here on how to do this
154 - while (IS_PRERELEASE)
156 - increase the nano number (starting with 2)
157 - check out a fresh anonymous copy
158 cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.gstreamer.sf.net:/cvsroot/gstreamer \
159 co -rBRANCH-RELEASE-0_3_3 gstreamer
160 - make distcheck, rpm build should pass, from a FRESH cvs tree
161 - media tests should be done
162 - source tarball should be installed and tested
163 - rpms should be installed and tested
164 - .2 tarball should be submitted to translation project
165 - put up tarball for a day
171 When we're satisfied with the prereleases, it's time to make the final tarball.
172 It's very important that the tarball we put out is fully checked, works as
173 planned, and generally is generated only ONCE by someone with a relatively
174 clean (and reference) system. We don't want to put out more than one tarball
178 - give the latest prerelease another good testing
179 - proofread the release notes
180 - run bugzilla with the correct module and milestone and include
181 the output in the release notes
182 bin/bugzilla gstreamer 0.7.5 >> src/htdocs/releases/gstreamer/0.7.5.xml
184 - verify all new translations are in and po files are updated:
185 run 'make download-po' to make sure translations in CVS are up-to-date,
186 and then 'make update' in po/ (which will update the .pot template too and
187 merge the changes into the .po files)
188 - run win32-update from toplevel to copy new versions and enum files
189 - copy www/htdocs/releases/$(module)/$(version) to RELEASE
190 - copy the list of changes, bugs fixed, and API changes and add them to NEWS
191 - update the ChangeLog to account for NEWS, RELEASE, and configure.ac,
192 mentioning the release name
193 - add === release (version) === to ChangeLog
194 - update web site docs
195 - release-specific docs should go in CVS
196 - change docs/current symlink
197 - remove the nano version number in configure.ac, AS_VERSION
200 for example for 0.6.3 :
201 cvs tag RELEASE-0_6_3
202 - run "make release", build rpms
203 - install on gnome's ftp
204 - for plugins docs: run "make update" in docs/plugins to update version info
205 - for docs: run "make upload" from gstreamer/docs to get the new docs online
206 - change www/src/htdocs/entities.gst with the new version numbers
207 - change www/src/htdocs/bugs/bugs.xml and add a new milestone
208 - possibly add new version and milestone to bugzilla
209 - add a news item to the news.xml
213 Time to bring the new version under the eyes of the public.
216 - FIXME: should we md5 the tarballs?
217 - upload to sourceforge
218 upload.sourceforge.net/incoming
219 administer the release
221 - FIXME: announcements
222 - gstreamer-{devel, announce} : a simple mail with RELEASE
224 - linux-audio-dev (if it's a big release) : a simple mail with RELEASE
226 - lwn (if it's a big release)
227 - send mail for translators with URL to .tar.bz2:
228 translation@iro.umontreal.ca
229 - Kick back, have a party, enjoy people coming in on IRC telling us how
231 - Later on, if necessary, merge back latest release branch to current dev
232 branch (if patches to source were made)
236 * get a diff between the branch root and the final release:
237 cvs diff -r BRANCH-RELEASE-0_7_5-ROOT -r RELEASE-0_7_5 > patch
238 * fix up this patch (remove RELEASE)
239 * and apply it to the HEAD branch
240 * update nano version to 1 in configure.ac
243 * change to a HEAD branch, make sure it's updated
244 * cvs diff -R -r RELEASE-0_3_4-30SECONDFRENCHMAN
245 gives a list of differences between head and release tag,
246 stuff with > is how it's in HEAD, < is in the rel branch
248 * cvs update -j BRANCH-RELEASE-0_3_4
249 merges the difference made in that branch to the current source
250 this is what you want to use when merging back the branch
251 resolve conflicts and commit
253 Some various random comments that might or might not make sense :
256 * autoconf feature to allow building outside source dir
258 - Package version policy
259 - Use major.minor.micro versioning
260 - Before 1.0.0, Update micro until code and API are fairly stable,
263 Update major when code and api hit new level of stability or major features.
264 Update minor on API changes.
265 Update micro on API-compatible changes.
267 NOTES ON STARTING A NEW STABLE SERIES
268 -------------------------------------
269 - Given x.y.z being the last devel release, where y is an odd number
270 - all API/ABI/renaming changes should be done
272 - get a completely fresh checkout
273 - set GST_MAJORMINOR to x.(y + 1)
274 - reset libtool versioning to 0, 0, 0
276 - grep for possible non-updates of MAJORMINOR:
277 grep -r "0\.9" * | grep -v "0\.9\.6" | less -R
279 perl -i -p -e 's@0\.9(\.[^0-9])@0.10$1@g' (file) changes 0.9. -> 0.10.
280 perl -i -p -e 's@0\.9([^.])@0.10$1@g' (file) changes 0.9 -> 0.10