zebrad 1.0.0-alpha.3 Release

[teor2345]

Initial Testing

• After any changes, test that the cargo install command in README.md works (use --path instead of --git locally)

Versioning

Which Crates to Increment

To check if any of the top-level crates need version increments, go to the zebra GitHub code page: https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zebra

• Increment the crates that have new commits since the last version update
• Increment any crates that depend on crates that have changed
• Use the zebrad crate version in the zebrad app code and zebra-network user agent
• Use the latest git tag in README.md

How to Increment Versions

Zebra follows semantic versioning.

Semantic versions look like:
MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH[-TAG.PRE-RELEASE]

Pre-Release Crates

Pre-Release versions have a TAG like "alpha" or "beta".
For example: "1.0.0-alpha.0"

1. Increment the PRE-RELEASE version for the crate.

Optionally, if a MINOR feature pre-release breaks MAJOR API compatibility:
2. Increment the MAJOR version, and reset all the other versions to zero

Unstable Crates

Unstable versions have a MAJOR version of zero.
For example: "0.1.0"

1. Follow stable crate versioning, but increment the MINOR version for breaking changes

Stable Crates

For example: "1.0.0"

Increment the first version component in this list, and reset the other components to zero:

1. MAJOR versions for breaking public API changes and removals

• check for types from dependencies that appear in the public API

2. MINOR versions for new features
3. PATCH versions for bug fixes

• includes dependency updates that don't impact the public API

Version Locations

Once you know which versions you want to increment, you can find them in the:

• zebra* Cargo.tomls
• tower-* Cargo.tomls
• zebrad app code: https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zebra/blob/main/zebrad/src/components/tracing/component.rs
• zebra-network protocol user agent: https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zebra/blob/main/zebra-network/src/constants.rs
• README.md

Merge all these version increments as one commit, by squashing and rebasing the PR onto the main branch.

Version Tooling

You can use fastmod to interactively find and replace versions.

For example, for zebra-1.0.0-alpha-3, we did:

fastmod --extensions rs,toml,md --fixed-strings '1.0.0-alpha.3' '1.0.0-alpha.4'
fastmod --extensions rs,toml,md --fixed-strings '1.0.0-alpha.2' '1.0.0-alpha.3'
fastmod --extensions rs,toml,md --fixed-strings '0.2.0' '0.2.1' tower-batch

We skipped tower-fallback, because it hadn't changed since the last tag.

Change Log

We follow the Keep a Changelog format.

We use the Release Drafter workflow to automatically create a draft changelog.

To create the final change log:

• Delete any trivial changes
• Combine duplicate changes
• Edit change descriptions so they are consistent, and make sense to non-developers
• Check the category for each change
  • prefer the "Fix" category if you're not sure

Change Categories

From "Keep a Changelog":

• Added for new features.
• Changed for changes in existing functionality.
• Deprecated for soon-to-be removed features.
• Removed for now removed features.
• Fixed for any bug fixes.
• Security in case of vulnerabilities.

After merging this PR

• Update the draft release with the final changelog
• Point the draft release at the commit resulting from merging this PR, using the correct version tag name
• Mark the release as 'pre-release' (until we are no longer alpha/beta)

Final Testing

• After tagging the release, test that the exact cargo install command works
  (--git behaves a bit differently to --path)

If the build fails after tagging:

1. fix the build
2. check if the fixes changed any extra crates, and do the required version increments
3. update README.md with a new git tag
4. tag another release

[teor2345]

* Point the GitHub changelog to the version increment commit

@dconnolly I can't remember what this means 😳

[teor2345]

Draft Release Notes

Zebra's latest alpha brings multiple reliability and stability improvements for node startup, long-running syncs, and testing.

Some notable changes include:

Added

• Add beta rust to CI (Add beta rust to CI #1725)
• Add Usability Testing Plan GitHub issue template (Add Usability Testing Plan template to the list of issue templates #1519)
• Add Release Checklist GitHub pull request template (Add draft PR template for release checklist #1717)

Changed

• Compute the network message body length to reduce heap allocations (Compute the expected body length to reduce heap allocations #1773)
• Re-enable the macOS conflict acceptance tests (Re-enable the macOS conflict acceptance tests #1778)
• Re-enable coverage CI (Partly revert removal of docs and coverage CI #1758, Disable failing docs workflow #1787)
• Disable fail-fast in the CI test job (Disable fail-fast from test job #1776)
• Rename responsible_disclosure.md to SECURITY.md (Rename responsible_disclosure.md to SECURITY.md #1747)

Removed

• Disable unreliable testnet large sync test (Disable unreliable sync_large_checkpoints_testnet #1789)

Fixed

Hangs and Panics

• Refactor connection.rs to make fail_with panics impossible (Refactor connection.rs to make fail_with errors impossible #1721)
• Stop ignoring failed peer addresses (Fix candidate set address state handling #1709)
• Retry initial peer DNS resolution on failure (Retry DNS resolution on failure #1762)
• Update tower-batch semaphore implementation (Incomplete: Wake waiting tower-batch clones on close #1764)
• Use ready! in ChainVerifier::poll_ready (Partly revert "Fix poll_ready usage in ChainVerifier" #1735)
• Use CallAllUnordered in peer_set::add_initial_peers (Revert "Stop using CallAllUnordered in peer_set::add_initial_peers" #1734)

Testing

• Bump CI build and test timeouts to 60 minutes (CI: bump build and test timeouts to 60 minutes #1757)
• Run CI workflow on push to main & manual request (Run CI workflow on push to #main & manual request #1748)
• Set ZEBRA_SKIP_NETWORK_TESTS using Windows syntax (Set ZEBRA_SKIP_NETWORK_TESTS using Windows syntax #1782)
• Fix Windows build failures due to disk space (Fix windows build for large sync tests #1726)
• Fix acceptance test timeouts, cleanup, and diagnostics (Increase the conflict acceptance test launch delay #1736, Diagnostics for listener conflict CI failures #1766, Kill running acceptance test nodes on error, and show their output #1770, Fix Windows conflict test failures on main #1777)

Logging and Metrics

• Update PeerSet metrics after every change (Update PeerSet metrics after every change #1727)
• Log initial peer connection failures (Log initial peer connection failures #1763)

[dconnolly]

* Point the GitHub changelog to the version increment commit

@dconnolly I can't remember what this means 😳

Aha, when this commit is merged, point the draft release, with our edited release notes pasted in, at the new commit, and mark as 'pre-release', not draft, anymore.

[dconnolly]

* Point the GitHub changelog to the version increment commit

@dconnolly I can't remember what this means 😳

Aha, when this commit is merged, point the draft release, with our edited release notes pasted in, at the new commit, and mark as 'pre-release', not draft, anymore.

Made edits to this PR and a new one to update the template with them

[dconnolly]

After tagging the release, test that the exact cargo install command works
(--git behaves a bit differently to --path)

Tested successfully on macOS, built v1.0.0-alpha.3, ran a good sync