Release plan for 2021.12

[brettcannon]

All dates should align with VS Code's iteration and endgame plans.

Feature freeze (Monday @ 17:00 America/Vancouver, Nov 29)

• Announce the feature freeze on both Teams and e-mail, leave enough time for teams to surface any last minute issues that need to get in before freeze. Make sure debugger and Language Server teams are looped in as well.

Release candidate (Monday, Dec 06)

• Update main for the release
  • Change the version in package.json from a -dev suffix to -rc (🤖)
  • Run npm install to make sure package-lock.json is up-to-date (🤖)
  • Check pypi.org and update the version of debugpy in install_debugpy.py.
  • Update languageServerVersion in package.json to point to the latest version of the Language Server. Check with the language server team if this needs updating.
  • Update CHANGELOG.md (🤖)
    • Run news (typically python news --final --update CHANGELOG.md | code-insiders -)
    • Copy over the "Thanks" section from the previous release into the "Thanks" section for the new release
    • Make sure the "Thanks" section is up-to-date (e.g. compare to versions in requirements.txt)
    • Touch up news entries (e.g. add missing periods)
    • Check the Markdown rendering to make sure everything looks good
    • Add any relevant news entries for debugpy and the language server if they were updated
  • Update ThirdPartyNotices-Distribution.txt by using https://tools.opensource.microsoft.com/notice (Notes for this process are in the Team OneNote under Python VS Code → Dev Process → Third-Party Notices / TPN file)
  • Update ThirdPartyNotices-Repository.txt as appropriate. This file is manually edited so you can check with the teams if anything needs to be added here.
  • Merge pull request into main
• Create the release branch
  • If there are release branches that are two versions old (e.g. release-2020.[current month - 2]) you can delete them at this time
  • Create a new release/YYYY.MM branch from main
• Update main post-release (🤖)
  • Bump the version number to the next monthly ("YYYY.MM.0-dev") release in the main branch
    • package.json
    • package-lock.json
  • Create a pull request against main
  • Merge pull request into main
• Announce the code freeze is over on the same channels
• Update Component Governance (Notes are in the team OneNote under Python VS Code → Dev Process → Component Governance).
  • Make sure there are no active alerts
  • Manually add any repository/embedded/CG-incompatible dependencies
• GDPR bookkeeping (@brettcannon) (🤖; Notes in OneNote under Python VS Code → Dev Process → GDPR)
• Open appropriate documentation issues
• Begin drafting a blog post. Contact the PM team for this.
• Ask CTI to test the release candidate

Release (Wednesday, Dec 09)

Preparation

• Make sure the appropriate pull requests for the documentation -- including the WOW page -- are ready
• Final updates to the release-YYYY.MM branch
  • Create a branch against release-YYYY.MM for a pull request
  • Update the version in package.json to remove the -rc (🤖)
  • Run npm install to make sure package-lock.json is up-to-date (the only update should be the version number if package-lock.json has been kept up-to-date) (🤖)
    • Update CHANGELOG.md (🤖)
      • Update version and date for the release section
      • Run news and copy-and-paste new entries (typically python news --final | code-insiders -; quite possibly nothing new to add)
  • Update ThirdPartyNotices-Distribution.txt by using https://tools.opensource.microsoft.com/notice (🤖; see team notes)
    • Update ThirdPartyNotices-Repository.txt manually if necessary
    • Create pull request against release-YYYY.MM (🤖)
    • Merge pull request into release-YYYY.MM
• Make sure component governance is happy

Release

• Publish the release (🤖)
  • Make sure CI is passing
  • Download the artifact containing the VSIX and make sure no extraneous files are being included in the .vsix file (make sure to check for hidden files)
  • Update the Marketplace
  • From a VS Code instance uninstall the python extension. After the publish see if the new version is available from the extensions tab. Download it and quick sanity check to make sure the extension loads.
• Create a GitHub release (🤖)
  • Start creating a new release
  • Make the tag match the version of the released extension
  • Copy the changelog entry into the release as the description
• Publish documentation changes
• Publish the blog post
• Determine if a hotfix is needed
• Merge release-YYYY.MM back into main. Don't overwrite the -dev version in package.json. (🤖)

Clean up after this release

• Go through info needed issues and close any that have no activity for over a month (🤖)
• GDPR bookkeeping (🤖)

Prep for the next release

• Create a new release plan (🤖)
• (Un-)pin release plan issues (🤖)