Release plan for 2018.8.0

[brettcannon]

Week of Monday, Aug 06

• Go through telemetry for GDPR
• Go through all merged pull requests and add the validate fix label as appropriate as well as checking for news entries
• Validate fixed issues
• Update pre-existing dependencies as appropriate (npm, Python, git submodule, or otherwise; requires updating CELA)
• Review the state of the current milestone
• Triage unverified issues

Planning

• Evaluate projects & meta issues
• Evaluate if TypeScript usage needs updating to sync with VS Code's usage
• Go through needs PR issues to see if there's anything we want to add to this milestone
• Finalize the initial set of issues for the milestone
• Close issues that have needed more info for over a month

Week of Monday, Aug 13

• Review the state of the current milestone
• Go through telemetry for GDPR
• Go through all merged pull requests and add the validate fix label as appropriate as well as checking for news entries
• Validate fixed issues
• Triage unverified issues

Planning

• Check if there have been no performance regressions
• Read through VS Code's iteration plan (it may still be a draft)

Week of Monday, Aug 20

• Review the state of the current milestone
• Go through telemetry for GDPR
• Go through all merged pull requests and add the validate fix label as appropriate as well as checking for news entries
• Validate fixed issues
• Triage unverified issues

Legal

• Announce the lock-down of dependencies for this release
• Notify CELA of all changes to the repository, distribution dependencies (including ptvsd, and git submodules (e.g. Typeshed)

Release a beta version for testing

• Update the version to be a beta & update the changelog
• Announce the beta development build (along with how to help validate fixes)
• Open appropriate documentation issues

Week of Monday, Aug 27

• Review the state of the current milestone
• Go through telemetry for GDPR
• Merge any last-minute pull requests
• Go through all merged pull requests and add the validate fix label as appropriate as well as checking for news entries
• Validate fixed issues
• Triage unverified issues

Prep for the release candidate

• Announce feature freeze
• Make sure the repo and distribution TPNs have been updated appropriately

Test the release candidate code

• Update the version to be an rc & update the changelog
• Announce the release candidate development build
• Open appropriate documentation issues
• Begin drafting a blog post

Prep the release

• Ensure all new feature usages are tracked via telemetry
• Make sure no extraneous files are being included in the .vsix file (make sure to check for hidden files)
• Make sure the appropriate pull requests for the documentation -- including the WOW page -- are ready

Release

• Update the changelog (including the names of external contributors & projects)
• Update the version number to be final
• Make sure CI is passing
• Generate the final .vsix file
• Upload the final .vsix file to the marketplace
• Publish documentation changes
• Publish the blog post
• Create a release on GitHub (which creates an appropriate git tag)
• Determine if a hotfix is needed
• Create the release- branch

Prep for the next release

• Bump the version number to the next alpha
• Make sure the next two milestones exist
• Lift the feature freeze
• Create a new release plan

Clean up after this release

• Clean up any straggling fixed issues needing validation
• Close the (now) old milestone
• Delete the previous releases' branch
• Go through needs more info issues and close any that have no activity for over a month