3.0 KiB
Release Process
Meta: There should always be a single release engineer to disambiguate responsibility.
A. Define the release version as:
$ ZCASH_RELEASE=MAJOR.MINOR.REVISION(-BUILD_STRING)
Example:
$ ZCASH_RELEASE=1.0.0-beta2
Also, the following commands use the ZCASH_RELEASE_PREV
bash variable for the
previous release:
$ ZCASH_RELEASE_PREV=1.0.0-beta1
B. create a new release branch / github PR
B1. update (commit) version in sources
doc/README.md
src/clientversion.h
configure.ac
In configure.ac
and clientversion.h
:
-
Increment
CLIENT_VERSION_BUILD
according to the following schema:- 0-24:
1.0.0-beta1
-1.0.0-beta25
- 25-49:
1.0.0-rc1
-1.0.0-rc25
- 50:
1.0.0
- 51-99:
1.0.0-1
-1.0.0-49
- (
CLIENT_VERSION_REVISION
rolls over) - 0-24:
1.0.1-beta1
-1.0.1-beta25
- 0-24:
-
Change
CLIENT_VERSION_IS_RELEASE
to false while Zcash is in beta-test phase.
B2. write release notes
git shortlog helps a lot, for example:
$ git shortlog --no-merges v${ZCASH_RELEASE_PREV}..HEAD \
> ./doc/release-notes/release-notes-${ZCASH_RELEASE}.md
B3. change the network magics
If this release breaks backwards compatibility, change the network magic
numbers. Set the four pchMessageStart
in CTestNetParams
in chainparams.cpp
to random values.
B4. merge the previous changes
Do the normal pull-request, review, testing process for this release PR.
C. Verify code artifact hosting
C1. Ensure depends tree is working
https://ci.z.cash/builders/depends-sources
C2. Ensure public parameters work
Run ./fetch-params.sh
.
D. make tags / release-branch for the newly merged result
In this example, we ensure zc.v0.11.2.latest is up to date with the previous merged PR, then:
$ git tag v${ZCASH_RELEASE}
$ git branch zc.v${ZCASH_RELEASE}
$ git push origin v${ZCASH_RELEASE}
$ git push origin zc.v${ZCASH_RELEASE}
E. deploy testnet
Notify the Zcash DevOps engineer/sysadmin that the release has been tagged. They update some variables in the company's automation code and then run an Ansible playbook, which:
- builds Zcash based on the specified branch
- deploys it as a public service (e.g. betatestnet.z.cash, mainnet.z.cash)
- often the same server can be re-used, and the role idempotently handles upgrades, but if not then they also need to update DNS records
- possible manual steps: blowing away the
testnet3
dir, deleting old parameters, restarting DNS seeder - finally, verify that nodes can connect to the testnet server.
F. publish the release announcement (blog, zcash-dev, slack)
G. celebrate
missing steps
Zcash still needs:
-
deterministic or reproducible builds
-
signed git tags
-
thorough pre-release testing (presumably more thorough than standard PR tests)
-
release deployment steps (eg: updating build-depends mirror, deploying testnet, etc...)
-
proper Zcash-specific versions and names in software and documentation.