docs/RELEASE.md

   1 ---
   2 title: Steps to a Successful Release
   3 category: Contributing
   4 layout: default
   5 SPDX-License-Identifier: LGPL-2.1-or-later
   6 ---
   7
   8 # Steps to a Successful Release
   9
  10 1. Add all items to NEWS
  11 2. Update the contributors list in NEWS (`ninja -C build git-contrib`)
  12 3. Update the time and place in NEWS
  13 4. Update hwdb (`ninja -C build update-hwdb`, `ninja -C build update-hwdb-autosuspend`, commit separately).
  14 5. Update syscall numbers (`ninja -C build update-syscall-tables update-syscall-header`).
  15 6. [RC1] Update library numbers in `meson.build`
  16 7. Update version number in `meson.version` (e.g. from `v256~devel` to `v256~rc1` or from `v256~rc3` to `v256`)
  17 8. Check dbus docs with `ninja -C build update-dbus-docs`
  18 9. Update translation strings (`ninja -C build systemd-pot`, `ninja -C build systemd-update-po`) - drop the header comments from `systemd.pot` + re-add SPDX before committing. If the only change in a file is the 'POT-Creation-Date' field, then ignore that file.
  19 10. Tag the release: `version=vXXX~rcY && git tag -s "${version}" -m "systemd ${version}"`. Note that this uses a tilde (\~) instead of a hyphen (-) because tildes sort lower in version comparisons according to the [version format specification](https://uapi-group.org/specifications/specs/version_format_specification/), and we want `v255~rc1` to sort lower than `v255`.
  20 11. Do `ninja -C build`
  21 12. Make sure that the version string and package string match: `build/systemctl --version`
  22 13. [FINAL] Close the github milestone and open a new one (https://github.com/systemd/systemd/milestones)
  23 14. "Draft" a new release on github (https://github.com/systemd/systemd/releases/new), mark "This is a pre-release" if appropriate.
  24 15. Check that announcement to systemd-devel, with a copy&paste from NEWS, was sent. This should happen automatically.
  25 16. Update IRC topic (`/msg chanserv TOPIC #systemd Version NNN released | Online resources https://systemd.io/`)
  26 17. [FINAL] Push commits to stable, create an empty -stable branch: `git push systemd-stable --atomic origin/main:main origin/main:refs/heads/${version}-stable`.
  27 18. [FINAL] Build and upload the documentation (on the -stable branch): `ninja -C build doc-sync`
  28 19. [FINAL] Change the default branch to latest release (https://github.com/systemd/systemd-stable/settings/branches).
  29 20. [FINAL] Change the Github Pages branch in the stable repository to the newly created branch (https://github.com/systemd/systemd-stable/settings/pages) and set the 'Custom domain' to 'systemd.io'
  30 21. [FINAL] Update version number in `meson.version` to the devel version of the next release (e.g. from `v256` to `v257~devel`)