How to Make a Release

Overview

This is an updated set of notes regarding a software release. It is tailored to a release of Hyrax, but the same process can be used for any of our code.

1. look for any tickets that have been bound to the label 'fix release x.y.z' and make sure those are completed.
2. Using the Kanban board, when we are ready to release, follow the process outlined below.
3. Once done, close the board

Old process overview

To plan a sprint there are two basic sets of tasks: cleaning up the left over bugs that have accumulated during the past sprints and then working on a set of predictable tasks. This page lists those predictable tasks and some notes about the various releases. In the burndown chart built by Jira, there is a Time Spent column that tells how long each of the various tasks really took. While it's impossible to predict how long some of the stuff will take, previous performance is the best tool we've got, as they say...

Set Tasks for a Release

Only start this process with libdap, bes and OLFS master branches all building and passing their tests.

For a major release:

Security Review for libdap, BES and OLFS

Write a new X.Y web page. See the web site admin notes for info about this. It has important information about the menu links. Base this on the previous release page's structure/content.

The tasks identified for Hyrax 1.15.1 and the time it took to complete them:

Update Hyrax release pages on website (4h)

For this, copy the X.Y page and make it X.Y.n. In the future, we might use only a single page for release X.Y and simply amend it with information for version .1, .2, and so on. Don't bother to edit the links, just get the text in place.

Source release libdap

30m

Source release BES

3h 30m

Build OLFS release bundles

1h

Software packages on website

30m

Sign the packages

Do this by downloading the packages, signing and then uploading the .sig files - no need to upload the packages.

Update Hyrax release links on website

2h

Install the new server on test.opendap.org

2h

Update the info for the hyrax Docker container build in the Docker project on GiTHub

Old set of tasks

The tasks identified for Hyrax 1.12.2 and the time it took to complete them:

Verify CI build and fix as needed

6h

Security Review libdap & bes

6h

Security review OLFS

1d

Source release libdap

30m

Source release BES

3h 30m

Build OLFS release bundles

1h

Build RPMs for release

3h 30m

Software packages on website

30m

Update Hyrax release pages on website

2h

Install new sever on test.opendap.org

2h

Total time for these tasks used during Hyrax 1.12.2

33h

We did 9 other tasks too during the hyrax 1.12.2 release. The total time was planned as 3w 1d 5h and turned out as 1w 2d 2h 10m.