Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
187 lines (125 loc) · 4.8 KB

release_guide.pod

File metadata and controls

187 lines (125 loc) · 4.8 KB
Raw

release_guide.pod - guide to Rakudo releases

Rakudo's development release cycle is based on Parrot's release cycle. Parrot releases the third Tuesday of each month; Rakudo will generally issue its own development release two days after the Parrot release.

Each development release is given a sequential number and a code name based on an active Perl Mongers group. Rakudo's February 2009 release is #14; prior releases were bundled as part of monthly Parrot releases.

Development releases

2009-02-26   Rakudo #14 "Vienna"
2009-03-20   Rakudo #15 "Oslo"
2009-04-23   Rakudo #16 "Bratislava"
2009-05-21   Rakudo #17 "Stockholm"

Planned 2009 releases

Dates are based on Parrot's expected release schedule.

2009-06-18   Rakudo #18 "Pittsburgh"
2009-07-23   Rakudo #19
2009-08-20   Rakudo #20
2009-09-17   Rakudo #21
2009-10-22   Rakudo #22
2009-11-19   Rakudo #23
2009-12-17   Rakudo #24

Suggested .pm group names for future releases

BristolBath.pm
Milan.pm
Seoul.pm

Steps to create a release (for release managers)

Each Rakudo development release is timed to occur two days after a Parrot monthly release.

  1. A few days before the Parrot release, it's a good idea to:

    • Remind people of the upcoming release, invite people to update the ChangeLog file, update the ROADMAP, choose a release name, etc.

    • Verify that the Parrot trunk head is able to build Rakudo and run the spectest suite.

    • If Parrot's trunk exhibits any problems building or running Rakudo (that require changes to Parrot to fix), immediately report them to the Parrot development team so they can be fixed prior to Parrot's release.

    • Review the RT queue for tickets that might need resolving prior to the release, addressing them as needed.

  2. Once Parrot issues its monthly release, edit Rakudo's build/PARROT_REVISION file to contain the subversion revision number corresponding to Parrot's monthly release. As always, test to make sure Rakudo still builds and passes its tests. Once build/PARROT_REVISION has been set to the Parrot release, it must not be changed until after the Rakudo release. In other words, we want each monthly release of Rakudo to be able to be built using the immediately prior release of Parrot.

  3. The short period following the Parrot release until the Rakudo release is generally intended for fixing bugs, updating documentation, and so on.

  4. As the actual release date nears, review the git log history to see if any additional items need to be added to the ChangeLog. This can be conveniently done with "git log --since=yyyy-mm-dd --reverse".

  5. When it's time to cut the release, create a new release announcement in docs/announce/YYYY-MM. It's often a good idea to use the previous month's file as a starting point for this. Highlight areas in which the new release is significant. If possible, also give some small details about the choice of release name. (If the details are a bit lengthy, this can often best be done as a separate section at the bottom of the announcement.)

  6. Update the release dates and names at the top of this file (docs/release-guide.pod). Also improve these instructions if you find any steps that are missing.

  7. Make sure everything compiles and runs from a known clean state:

    $ make realclean
$ perl Configure.pl --gen-parrot
$ make
$ make test
$ make spectest

    Continue adjusting things until make spectest passes as expected.

  8. Make sure any locally modified files have been pushed back to github.

  9. Create an initial tarball by entering "make release VERSION=YYYY-MM", where YYYY-MM is the month for which the release is being made. This will create a candidate tarball file named <rakudo-YYYY-MM.tgz>.

  10. Unpack the tar file into another area, and test that it builds and runs properly. If there are any problems, fix them and go back to step 7.

  11. Tag the release by its release month ("MMMM-YY") and its code name.

    $ git tag -a -m"tag release #nn" MMMM-YY    # e.g., 2009-04
$ git tag -a -m"tag release #nn" CODENAME   # e.g., "Bratislava"
$ git push

  12. Upload the release tarball to github's download area at http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/downloads .

  13. Publish the release announcement (from #5) above to appropriate locations, including rakudo.org, use.perl, perl6-language, perl6-announce, perl6-users, and others.

  14. Update the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakudo.

  15. Promote the release anywhere else you think appropriate.

  16. You're done! Celebrate with the appropriate amount of fun.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2009, The Perl Foundation.