Releasing Selenium

Release criteria

While Selenium code is tied to Chrome versions, the goal is to release a minor version of Selenium between Early Stable and Stable release dates as specified in Chromium Release Schedule

• Communicate in Selenium Chat a reminder of upcoming releases
• Blockers should be tracked the applicable Release Milestone
• Check Pull Requests for anything that needs to be added to the milestone
• Ensure CI is passing, both RBE and CI; note that the Scheduled CI are the only ones guaranteed to have everything run.

Prerequisites

Click to see Java prerequisites

Java

1. Get a Sonatype account. Go through the initial setup if you do not have a user
2. Request push access via this ticket example.
3. Install GnuPG. Detailed instructions can be seen here. Follow the section that mentions how to distribute GnuPG public key. GitHub also has good instructions to generate a key.
4. Use mvn -emp to encrypt your passphrase
5. Make sure your ~/.m2/settings.xml contains the following lines in the <servers> and <settingsSecurity> sections:

    <server>
        <id>sonatype-nexus-snapshots</id>
        <username>_your-username-for-oss.sonatype.org_</username>
        <password>_your-password_</password>
    </server>
    <server>
        <id>sonatype-nexus-staging</id>
        <username>_your-username-for-oss.sonatype.org_</username>
        <password>_your-password_</password>
        <settingsSecurity>
            <master>{your_encrypted_passphrase}</master>
        </settingsSecurity>
    </server>

Click to see .NET prerequisites

.NET

To release a new version you will need to be registered as an owner on Nuget Obtain an API Key and store it in NUGET_API_KEY environment variable

Click to see Ruby prerequisites

Ruby

To release a new gem you will need to be registered as a gem owner on rubygems.org Generate an API key from rubygems and store it in GEM_HOST_API_KEY environment variable

Click to see Python prerequisites

Python

To release a new version you need to be registered as a Owner/Maintainer on pypi.python.org Create a token on pypi and put it in your .pypirc file. Make sure you have installed twine and it is available on your PATH (pip install twine)

Click to see JavaScript prerequisites

JavaScript

To release a new version you need to be registered as a Owner/Maintainer on npmjs

1. Make sure you are authenticated to npmjs.com. You can do that with npm adduser
2. Obtain an access token from npmjs
3. Create or edit the .npmrc file in your project directory or home directory (~/.npmrc).
4. Add a line with your token: //registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=<YOUR_TOKEN_HERE>.

Release Preparation

Run Workflow

There is a GitHub Actions Workflow that can be manually executed to make all appropriate updates to files in preparation for a release.

This workflow:

• Updates Rust version
• Builds and publishes Selenium Manager
• Updates CDP version
• Pins latest Selenium Manager location
• Updates Java Maven dependencies
• Updates Authors File
• Updates versions for all bindings
• Adds commit messages to changelogs
• Creates PR
• Starts Tests

Update Change logs

The GitHub workflow adds the commits to the change logs, but these need to be manually updated for format and clarity

1. Pull the PR gh pr checkout <PR_NUMBER>
2. Manually edit the change log files
3. Push the changes git push

Merge PR

When all tests have passed and the change logs have been updated, merge the PR. This will be the commit that gets tagged and released.

Merging the PR will now kick off an additional workflow that will do the tagging, generate a draft Selenium Release with all assets and changes populated, and create a PR with updated API Docs.

Build and Publish

Minor Release

./go all:release

This command:

• builds everything
• publishes everything (with prompts for permissions as applicable)
• updates nightly versions (with prompt for pushing final commit)

When everything is complete:

• review and publish the draft release - https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium/releases
• merge the automatically generated API documentation Pull Request

Patch Release

For the given language:

• Update the version: ./go <language>:version[4.14.1]
• That auto-generates a changelog update which needs to be edited for conciseness and readability
• Commit / Push
• Tag / Push using the full name (e.g., selenium-4.14.1-java)
• Build and publish: ./go <language>:release
• Update the documentation using Update Documentation Workflow. Be sure to specify the exact tag name
• Reset the version back to a nightly version:

./go <language>:version
git commit -am "updating version to nightly"
git push

Java

Whether major or minor release, Java has a few extra steps:

1. Go to http://oss.sonatype.org, log in
2. Navigate to https://oss.sonatype.org/#stagingRepositories
3. Look in content and make sure all jars and signed files are there
4. Close staging repository with message
5. Wait for checks and click "release" button; if the "Release" button is not enabled, this means that the checks for the repo are still running, you can click on the activity tab to see what activities are pending. This normally takes a few minutes.

IE Driver Server

Click to see IE Driver release steps

1. Update Atoms (optional)
   • bazel build //javascript/ie-driver:header
   • copy bazel-bin/javascript/ie-driver/atoms.h to cpp/iedriver/Generated directory
2. Open cpp/IEDriverServer.sln in Visual Studio 2022
3. In Solution Explorer tab, right click IEDriver/Resource Files/IEDriver.rc & view code
4. Update version number in 4 places: FILEVERSION, PRODUCTVERSION, FileVersion, ProductVersion
5. In Solution Explorer tab, right click IEDriverServer/Resource Files/IEDriverServer.rc & view code
6. Update version number in 4 places: FILEVERSION, PRODUCTVERSION, FileVersion, ProductVersion
7. Solution Configurations Dropdown in toolbar at top, select Release,
8. In Solution Platform Dropdown, select x64 & in Build menu, select Build Solution
9. In Solution Platform Dropdown, select x86 & in Build menu, select Build Solution
10. In build/cpp/x64/Release/IEDriverServer.exe compress file as IEDriverServer_x64_x.y.z.zip & upload it to Github Release
11. In build/cpp/Win32/Release/IEDriverServer.exe compress file as IEDriverServer_Win32_x.y.z.zip & upload it to Github Release

Selenium Documentation Repo

Examples updates

• Update versions (either)
  • Review Renovate's PRs (preferred).
  • Do it immediately: ./scripts/update-versions.sh ${SE_VERSION}
• Add new examples — is there anything new in this version that needs example code?
• Review / Commit / Push
• Make sure everything is passing — https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/seleniumhq.github.io/actions

Website updates

• Update versions and start a blog — ./scripts/release-updates.sh ${SE_VERSION}
• Update the newly created blog post as necessary
• Copy the GitHub user information in the console to the correct places in a blog post
• Make sure dates are properly updated in selenium-clients-and-webdriver-bindings.html
• Review / Commit / Push

Social Media

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Mastodon
• BlueSky
• Threads