solana/RELEASE.md

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Solana Release process

Branches and Tags

========================= master branch (edge channel) =======================>
         \                      \                     \
          \___v0.7.0 tag         \                     \
           \                      \         v0.9.0 tag__\
            \          v0.8.0 tag__\                     \
 v0.7.1 tag__\                      \                 v0.9 branch (beta channel)
              \___v0.7.2 tag         \___v0.8.1 tag
               \                      \
                \                      \
           v0.7 branch         v0.8 branch (stable channel)

master branch

All new development occurs on the master branch.

Bug fixes that affect a vX.Y branch are first made on master. This is to allow a fix some soak time on master before it is applied to one or more stabilization branches.

Merging to master first also helps ensure that fixes applied to one release are present for future releases. (Sometimes the joy of landing a critical release blocker in a branch causes you to forget to propagate back to master!)"

Once the bug fix lands on master it is cherry-picked into the vX.Y branch and potentially the vX.Y-1 branch. The exception to this rule is when a bug fix for vX.Y doesn't apply to master or vX.Y-1.

Immediately after a new stabilization branch is forged, the Cargo.toml minor version (Y) in the master branch is incremented by the release engineer. Incrementing the major version of the master branch is outside the scope of this document.

vX.Y stabilization branches

These are stabilization branches for a given milestone. They are created off the master branch as late as possible prior to the milestone release.

vX.Y.Z release tag

The release tags are created as desired by the owner of the given stabilization branch, and cause that X.Y.Z release to be shipped to https://crates.io

Immediately after a new vX.Y.Z branch tag has been created, the Cargo.toml patch version number (Z) of the stabilization branch is incremented by the release engineer.

Channels

Channels are used by end-users (humans and bots) to consume the branches described in the previous section, so they may automatically update to the most recent version matching their desired stability.

There are three release channels that map to branches as follows:

  • edge - tracks the master branch, least stable.
  • beta - tracks the largest (and latest) vX.Y stabilization branch, more stable.
  • stable - tracks the second largest vX.Y stabilization branch, most stable.

Release Steps

Changing channels

Create the new branch

  1. Pick your branch point for release on master.
  2. Create the branch. The name should be "v" + the first 2 "version" fields from Cargo.toml. For example, a Cargo.toml with version = "0.9.0" implies the next branch name is "v0.9".
    1. Note the Cargo.toml in the repo root directory does not contain a version. Look at any other Cargo.toml file.
  3. Create a new branch and push this branch to the solana repository.
    1. git checkout -b <branchname>
    2. git push -u origin <branchname>

Update master with the next version

  1. After the new branch has been created and pushed, update Cargo.toml on master to the next semantic version (e.g. 0.9.0 -> 0.10.0) by running ./scripts/increment-cargo-version.sh, then rebuild with cargo build to cause a refresh of Cargo.lock.
  2. Push your Cargo.toml change and the autogenerated Cargo.lock changes to the master branch

At this point, ci/channel-info.sh should show your freshly cut release branch as "BETA_CHANNEL" and the previous release branch as "STABLE_CHANNEL".

Updating channels (i.e. "making a release")

We use github's Releases UI for tagging a release.

  1. Go there ;).
  2. Click "Draft new release". The release tag must exactly match the version field in /Cargo.toml prefixed by v (ie, <branchname>.X).
    1. If the Cargo.toml verion field is 0.12.3, then the release tag must be v0.12.3
  3. If this is the first release on the branch (e.g. v0.13.0), paste in this template and fill it in.
  4. Test the release by generating a tag using semver's rules. First try at a release should be <branchname>.X-rc.0.
  5. Verify release automation:
    1. Crates.io should have an updated Solana version.
    2. ...
  6. After testnet deployment, verify that testnets are running correct software. http://metrics.solana.com should show testnet running on a hash from your newly created branch.
  7. Once the release has been made, update Cargo.toml on the release branch to the next semantic version (e.g. 0.9.0 -> 0.9.1) by running ./scripts/increment-cargo-version.sh patch, then rebuild with cargo build to cause a refresh of Cargo.lock.
  8. Push your Cargo.toml change and the autogenerated Cargo.lock changes to the release branch.