Developer Toolbelt for Textpattern CMS

A collection of tools which help to develop Textpattern CMS.

Contributing

Please see the Contributing documentation for details on how to get involved with the project.

Legal

Licensed under the GPLv2 license.

Textpattern release build process

This process prepares a development branch of Textpattern for production release. Follow the steps carefully to ensure a smooth onward journey.

Notes

• Semantic versioning is used, with major.minor.patch nomenclature.
• Development code is suffixed -dev.
• Development code can become a beta release, release candidate and/or production release.
• Beta releases are suffixed -beta, -beta.2, -beta.3 and so on.
• Release candidates are suffixed -rc1, -rc2, -rc3 and so on.
• References to x.y.z below refer to the Textpattern version number and may be suffixed as mentioned.

Preflight requirements

[WIP]

• Local instance of PHP CLI, gzip, tar and zip.
  • Checks: php -v, gzip -V, tar --version and zip -v.
• Know the intended next release version for resetting the repo after launch.
• Know the respective .com file IDs for the .zip and .tar.gz archives (optional, but saves time later).

Step 0: Ensure everything is up-to-date

On textpattern/textpattern, update HISTORY.txt with final added / changed / fixed release notes, but do not set the release date. Merge to other branch(es) where appropriate.

Locally, ensure all branches (i.e. main, dev, and any feature branches) are up-to-date:

git checkout branch-name
git pull

Step 1: Create release branch based on feature branch

Navigate to the branch from which to prepare a release, and create a release-x.y.z branch for the new version:

git checkout dev

or:

git checkout x.y.z

then:

git checkout -b release-x.y.z

Step 2: Set version numbers for all but textpattern/index.php

Update version number(s) in:

• README.txt
• INSTALL.txt
• UPGRADE.txt
• package.json
• README.md (if possible: might need to be done afterwards, if the file download links have yet to be created).
• The version preference value in textpattern/vendors/Textpattern/DB/Data/core.prefs.
• The textpattern.version value in textpattern/textpattern.js.
• Theme manifests:
  • textpattern/setup/themes/[default-theme-name]/manifest.json
  • textpattern/setup/themes/zero/manifest.json

Step 3: Verify setup & update scripts match

Ensure the contents of textpattern/setup directory is completely in sync with the textpattern/update scripts. Most of this is handled automatically but any per-user prefs or values injected from the setup process may need to be added manually.

Verify that multi-site files such as .htaccess, .htaccess-dist and css.php are up-to-date with their root counterparts.

Step 4: Commit history and versions

Commit all changes with a commit message of the format HISTORY and version numbers for x.y.z.

Step 5: Update version number

Edit textpattern/index.php to update the version number.

Most importantly:

Release type	Note
Stable	Set $txp_is_dev to false, then commit.
Beta	Leave $txp_is_dev at true, then commit.

Step 6: Update checksums

Run checksums.php from textpattern-toolbelt and point it at the textpattern directory inside your working branch (not the root):

php /path/to/textpattern-toolbelt/release/checksums.php /path/to/repo/textpattern rebuild

Optionally commit with message such as Checksums for x.y.z. You may wish to skip this commit if you're confident there are going to be no issues with the release. This is because:

• If there are no issues from the next step, there will be no files with changes upon which to hang the 'this is x.y.z' commit, so you may wish to defer (or skip) committing until after testing.
• If you do find issues, you can commit the current state including checksums, fix / test / commit with atomic commits as usual, then rerun checksums and commit as a final 'This is x.y.z', as mentioned in the next step.

Step 7: Test!

Copy the entire bundle to a local directory and test. Things to look for:

1. New installation/setup works.
2. Upgrade from (populated) recent versions works.
3. Multi-site installations work.
4. Automated installations work.
5. Version numbers are reported correctly throughout.
6. The High Diagnostics panel reports everything correctly.
7. Public tags provide expected output.
8. Runs on as many versions of PHP, MySQL (and own-brand equivalents), Apache, Nginx.
9. Interface UI strings are all assigned English labels.
10. Left over files that need deleting.

Fix anything that doesn't work, and commit changes to the release-x.y.z branch. Run checksums again if required and commit with message such as This is x.y.z.

Step 8: Update history

Update HISTORY.txt to tag the release with a date stamp.

Step 9: Merge to the main repo

Merge to main:

git checkout main
git merge release-x.y.z
git push

Step 10: Build the archives

Run the build script. It will build two packaged archive files with corresponding SHA256 checksum files in a temporary location and report where that is. Supply a second argument if you wish to override this destination.

cd /path/to/repo
/path/to/textpattern-toolbelt/release/txp-gitdist.sh x.y.z

Step 11: Verify archives

Verify archives have been built correctly. Decompress them to check.

Step 12: Build release on GitHub

Prepare a release for version x.y.z on GitHub:

• Set the tag to just the vanilla version number x.y.z along with any required -beta or -rc suffix.
• Ensure the target select box is main.
• Use the same tag name for the release Title, but prefix it with a lower case v.
• Attach archives and SHA256 checksums.
• If it's a beta or release candidate, ensure the Pre-release checkbox is set.

Use git pull to bring the new tag down to your local repo's main branch.

Step 13: Add archives to textpattern.com

Upload archives to textpattern.com website. Ensure they comply with the semantic filename versioning rules.

For each uploaded file, select the appropriate file category:

Current release (Zip format)
Current release (Gzip format)
Current beta release (Zip format)
Current beta release (Gzip format)

Make sure the Title and Description fields are filled out correctly (see previous files for examples of this). Title holds the release version number. Description houses the SHA256 token.

Step 14: Adjust archive category assignment

Remove the category assignment from previous uploads of a beta / stable releases. Note you can have a stable release and a beta release at the same time, but it's good housekeeping to remove old categories from previous releases. Everything is built automatically based on these category assignments.

Step 15: Finalise the release blog article

When writing the corresponding article, use the shortcode as follows:

notextile. <txp::media_file filename="textpattern-x.y.z.zip" />
<txp::media_file filename="textpattern-x.y.z.tar.gz" />

Step 16: Update orientation information

Add a section to the 'Get started' article when a beta is available (remove it from here at the end of the beta cycle but leave it in its dedicated article for posterity).

Update the release notes link in 'Get started with Textpattern' to point to the announcement blog post.

Step 17: Prepare for next version

Prepare for ongoing development:

git checkout release-x.y.z

Step 18: Set version numbers for next version

Edit the following files to bump version number to next intended release. Ensure they have -dev suffix. If this release is a beta or release candidate, it's okay to revert the version number to the same x.y.z-dev it was before.

• package.json
• /textpattern/index.php
• The version preference value in textpattern/vendors/Textpattern/DB/Data/core.prefs.
• The textpattern.version value in textpattern/textpattern.js.

Step 19: Set dev and commit next version

Set $txp_is_dev to true if it was previously false. Commit regardless to ensure version change is applied, using a suitable commit message of the format 'Back to dev'.

Step 20: Merge release back into dev

Merge release to dev so any changes in the release are recorded:

git checkout dev
git merge release-x.y.z
git push

Step 21: Tidy up branches

Delete release branch as it has served its purpose:

git branch -d release-x.y.z

You might have to use -D switch if the branch deletion complains it's 'unmerged': that's because we just modified it ready for returning to dev. It depends if the release branch was mistakenly pushed to the central repo or not. If so:

git push origin --delete release-x.y.z

If you've just released a feature branch (i.e. patch, not minor/major dev release) then there'll be the old x.y.z branch on your local and remote servers. Once you're absolutely sure that the merge back to dev from release-x.y.z has completed and pushed to the server successfully, you can remove your local and remote x.y.z branches:

git branch -d x.y.z
git push origin --delete x.y.z

Step 22: Tell everyone

Post announcements and gratitude to blog / forum / Twitter / relevant social media.

Step 23: Update links to latest version in docs, etc

Search through all textpattern.com articles to update any outdated version numbers (in case articles were written in advance or features got moved between versions, or reference the download itself).

Update version in rpc.textpattern.com (Extensions -> TXP Version).

Step 24: Relax

Light cigar, pour brandy and wait for the fallout. Sleep if appropriate.