Project: MetalLB (Orchestration & Management / Service Proxy)
File: release-process.md

title: Release Process weight: 2 This is the process to follow to make a new release. This should really be automated someday, but releases are juuuust infrequent enough that it's less annoying to just do the work each time. Are you actually ready to release? Check the milestone on github and verify that all its issues are closed. If there are open issues, you'll have to either resolve them, or bump to the next version. MetalLB uses release branches to track releases. In case a new release is cut as a mirror of main, merge can be used. For example: ```bash git checkout v0.9 git merge main git push ``` In case only a subset of the changes are brought to the new release, cherry-pick must be used. ```bash git checkout v0.9 git cherry-pick -x f1f86ed658c1e8a6f90f967ed94881d61476b4c0 git push ``` Note that this will break the release notes generator. If this fix is a backport, please consider filing a backport PR. A convenience generator script is added under `website/gen_relnotes.sh`. The syntax is as follows: ```bash website/gen_relnotes.sh <branch> <first commit> <last commit> ``` Where branch is the branch being released, first and last commit is the interval we want to generate the release notes for. The `GITHUB_TOKEN` environment variable must be set with a github token which has the following permissions: Read access to: Contents Pull requests Commit statuses All release notes are always written on the `main` branch, and copied into release branches in a later step. Point out all new features and actions required by users. If there are very notable bugfixes (e.g. security issues, long-term pain point resolved), point those out as well. Also update the documentation link so that the soon-to-be latest release's documentation link points to `metallb.io`, and the previous releases point to `vX-Y-Z--metallb.netlify.com`, which is the website pinned at that tagged release. To get a list of contributors to the release, run `git log --format="%aN" $(git merge-base CUR-BRANCH PREV-TAG)..CUR-BRANCH | sort -u | tr '\n' ',' | sed -e 's/,/, /g'`. `CUR-BRANCH` is `main` if you're making a minor release (e.g.

or the release branch for the current version if you're making a patch release (e.g. `v0.8` if you're making `v0.8.4`). `PREV-TAG` is the release tag name for the last release (e.g. if you're preparing 0.8.4, `PREV-TAG` is `v0.8.3`. Also think about whether there were significant contributions that weren't in the form of a commit, and include those people as well. It's better to err on the side of being too thankful! Commit the finalized release notes. The release script only works if the Git working directory is completely clean: no pending modifications, no untracked files, nothing. Make sure everything is clean, or run the release from a fresh checkout. The release script will abort if the working directory isn't right. Run `inv release X.Y.Z`. This will create the appropriate branches, commits and tags in your local repository. Run `git push --tags origin main vX.Y`. This will push all pending changes both in main and the release branch, as well as the new tag for the release. For major and minor releases, the release script created a new `vX.Y` branch. Go into github's repository settings and mark the branch protected, including from administrators, to guard against accidental force pushes. By default, new tags show up de-emphasized in the list of releases. Create a new release attached to the tag you just pushed. Make the description point to the release notes on the website. When you pushed, CI kicked off a set of image builds for the new tag. You need to wait for these images to be pushed live before continuing, because the manifests for the new release point to image tags that don't exist until CI makes them exist. Check on Quay for a `vX.Y.Z` tag on each image, or check on CI that the deploy has completed. Move the `live-website` branch to the newly created tag with `git branch -f live-website vX.Y.Z`, then force-push the branch with `git push -f origin live-website`. This will trigger Netlify to redeploy with updated documentation for the new version. Update the topic in `#metallb` on Kubernetes slack. Tweet, post to G+, slack, IRC, whatever. Make some noise, if it's worth making noise about!