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zcash_script/depend/zcash/doc/release-process.md

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Release Process

Meta: There should always be a single release engineer to disambiguate responsibility.

If this is a hotfix release, please see the Hotfix Release Process documentation before proceeding.

Pre-release

Github Milestone

Ensure all goals for the github milestone are met. If not, remove tickets or PRs with a comment as to why it is not included. (Running out of time is a common reason.)

Pre-release checklist:

Check that dependencies are properly hosted.

Check that there are no surprising performance regressions.

Update src/chainparams.cpp nMinimumChainWork with information from the getblockchaininfo rpc.

Check that dependencies are up-to-date or have been postponed. If necessary, install cargo-upgrades and cargo-audit:

cargo install cargo-upgrades cargo-audit

Then run each of the following:

$ ./qa/zcash/updatecheck.py
$ cargo upgrades
$ cargo audit

You can optionally create a file ~/.local/share/zcash/updatecheck/token (or $XDG_DATA_HOME/zcash/updatecheck/token if the XDG_DATA_HOME environment variable is set) to avoid running into GitHub rate limiting. Create an unprivileged personal access token on GitHub and copy the value into the file.

If there are updates that have not been postponed, review their changelogs for urgent security fixes, and if there aren't any, postpone the update by adding a line to qa/zcash/postponed-updates.txt.

Protocol Safety Checks:

If this release changes the behavior of the protocol or fixes a serious bug, verify that a pre-release PR merge updated PROTOCOL_VERSION in version.h correctly.

If this release breaks backwards compatibility or needs to prevent interaction with software forked projects, change the network magic numbers. Set the four pchMessageStart in CTestNetParams in chainparams.cpp to random values.

Both of these should be done in standard PRs ahead of the release process. If these were not anticipated correctly, this could block the release, so if you suspect this is necessary, double check with the whole engineering team.

Release dependencies

The release script has the following dependencies:

  • help2man
  • debchange (part of the devscripts Debian package)
  • the python modules progressbar2 (optional - displays a progress bar), requests and xdg

Versioning

Zcash version identifiers have the format vX.Y.Z with the following conventions:

  • Increments to the X component (the "major version") correspond to network upgrades. A network upgrade occurs only when there is a change to the consensus rules.
  • Increments to the Y component (the "minor version") correspond to regular Zcash releases. These occur approximately every 6 weeks and may include breaking changes to public APIs.
  • Increments to the Z component occur only in the case of hotfix releases.

Release candidate & release process

Identify the commit from which the release stabilization branch will be made. Release stabilization branches are used so that development can proceed unblocked on the master branch during the release candidate testing and bug-fixing process. By convention, release stabilization branches are named version-X.Y.0 where X and Y are the major and minor versions for the release.

In the commands below, and <RELEASE_PREV> must identify git tags prefixed with the character v, i.e. v1.0.9 (not 1.0.9). <COMMIT_ID> is a git hash identifying the commit on which a release stabilization or release branch will be based. It is recommended to use the entire hash value to identify the commit, although a prefix of at least 10 characters is also permitted.

Create the release stabilization branch

Having identified the commit from which the release will be made, the release manager constructs the release stabilization branch as follows:

$ git checkout -b version-X.Y.0 <COMMIT_ID>
$ git push 'git@github.com:zcash/zcash' $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)

Review & update the release notes

Now is the time to make sure that all of the changes since the previous release are property represented in doc/release-notes.md. Determine the tag that will be used for the RELEASE_FROM value by manually searching for the tag for the latest full release in the list obtained by running

$ git tag -l --sort=-taggerdate

and then finding the most recent non-release-candidate version. If you have a git remote for the upstream bitcoin-core repository, be aware that Bitcoin tags will also appear in this list. Then, skim the full diff since the last release and make certain that all user-visible changes are properly documented in doc/release-notes.md.

$ git diff <RELEASE_FROM>..HEAD

If you make any changes to the release notes, add commits to do so as necessary, but do NOT push these commits to the version-X.Y.Z branch on the upstream repository; they will be included in the release branch that will be created in the next step.

Create the release branch

Run the release script to create the release branch. This will create a branch based upon the specified commit ID, then commit standard automated changes to that branch locally:

$ ./zcutil/make-release.py <COMMIT_ID> <RELEASE> <RELEASE_PREV> <RELEASE_FROM> <APPROX_RELEASE_HEIGHT>

Examples:

$ ./zcutil/make-release.py 600c4acee1 v1.1.0-rc1 v1.0.0 v1.0.0 280300
$ ./zcutil/make-release.py b89b48cda1 v1.1.0 v1.1.0-rc1 v1.0.0 300600

Ordinarily, we choose a release height that is a couple hundred blocks in the future in order to give time for CI to run.

Create, Review, and Merge the release branch pull request

Review the automated changes in git:

$ git log version-X.Y.0..HEAD

Push the resulting branch to github:

$ git push 'git@github.com:$YOUR_GITHUB_NAME/zcash' $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)

Then create the PR on github targeting the version-X.Y.0 branch. Complete the standard review process and wait for CI to complete.

Make a tag for the tip of the release branch

NOTE: This has changed from the previously recommended process. The tag should be created at the tip of the automatically-generated release branch created by the release script; this ensures that any changes made to the release stabilization branch since the initiation of the release process are not accidentally tagged as being part of the release as a consequence of having been included in a merge commit.

Check the last commit on the local and remote versions of the release branch to make sure they are the same:

$ git log -1

If you haven't previously done so, set the gpg key id you intend to use for signing:

git config --global user.signingkey <keyid>

Then create the git tag. The -s means the release tag will be signed. Enter "Release ." and save when prompted for a commit message. CAUTION: Remember the v at the beginning here:

$ git tag -s vX.Y.Z[-rcN]

For release tags (not release candidates) copy the "Notable Changes" section of the release notes into the tag body when creating the tag. This makes it easy for command-line git users to review the changes in a release without having to check out the tag.

$ git push origin vX.Y.Z[-rcN]

Merge the release branch to the release stabilization branch

Once CI has completed and the release branch has sufficient approving reviews, merge the release branch back to the release stabilization branch. Testing proceeds as normal. Any changes that need to be made during the release candidate period are made by submitting PRs targeting the release stabilization branch.

Subsequent release candidates, and the creation of the final release, follow the same process as for release candidates, omitting the -rcN suffix for the final release.

Make and deploy deterministic builds

Add release notes to GitHub

The following part of the release process applies only to final releases, not release candidates.

  • Go to the GitHub tags page.
  • Click "Add release notes" beside the tag for this release.
  • Copy the "Notable Changes" section of the release notes into the release description, and edit to suit publication on GitHub. See previous release notes for examples.
  • Click "Publish release" if publishing the release blog post now, or "Save draft" to store the notes internally (and then return later to publish once the blog post is up).

Note that some GitHub releases are marked as "Verified", and others as "Unverified". This is related to the GPG signature on the release tag - in particular, GitHub needs the corresponding public key to be uploaded to a corresponding GitHub account. If this release is marked as "Unverified", click the marking to see what GitHub wants to be done.

Post Release Task List

Merge the release stabilization branch

Once the final release branch has merged to the release stabilization branch, a new PR should be opened for merging the release stabilization branch into master. This may require fixing merge conflicts (e.g. changing the version number in the release stabilization branch to match master, if master is ahead). Such conflicts MUST be addressed with additional commits to the release stabilization branch; specifically, the branch MUST NOT be rebased on master.

Once any conflicts have been resolved, the release stabilization branch should be merged back to the master branch, and then deleted.

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. testnet.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.

Verify that nodes can connect to the mainnet and testnet servers.

Update the Zcashd Full Node and CLI documentation on ReadTheDocs to give the new version number.

Publish the release announcement (blog, github, zcash-dev, slack)

Celebrate