4 This document, at this point, is a proposal only. It attempts to
5 document how we intend to make the upcoming releases, in order to make
6 as sure as possible no stupid bugs creep in just before the release.
8 Talk to James K. Lowden before releasing next time about how to set up a
14 When a new version is about to be released:
16 0) Day Zero (D+0): The core developers announce their intention of
17 making a new release. They call for a feature freeze on the CVS
18 HEAD (bug fixes are okay to commit). They also announce the
19 provisional duration of the freeze before the first release
20 candidate tarball is about to be made (actual freeze duration may vary for
21 instance according to the perceived amount of changes since the
22 last release; for the purpose of this document, it's assumed to be
25 Advanced users are encouraged to download the CVS HEAD or the
26 snapshot tarballs, and pound on them.
28 Make sure to check for open Bugzilla bugs with the PATCH keyword.
30 1) The core developers agree on the next version number. It's called
33 2) D+3: a release candidate tarball is made. It is called
34 $VERSION-pre1. Simultaneously, a CVS tag is made with the name
35 "DIA_$VERSION_PRE1" (with the non-alphanumeric characters in
36 $VERSION replaced by underscores). $VERSION-pre1 is registered with
37 the Bugzilla, however it is encouraged that bug reports are made
38 directly (or simultaneously) to the mailing list.
40 Please see the section below on how to make a tarball (yes, please do).
42 Translators, as pulled from the Translation-Team: field in the .po
43 files, are notified of the upcoming release to give them time to
44 translate new strings. No further changes to translatable strings
45 should happen from now till the final release ("string freeze").
47 3a) if a release-critical bug happens before D+10 (say, at D+n), the
48 release process is paused until the bug is fixed and a new release
49 candidate tarball $VERSION-pre2 is re-made. Go to either step 3a or
50 3b with D+10 replaced by D+n+10.
52 3b) D+10: if there are no release-critical bugs in the pre-release,
53 then the same source (fetched from the CVS tag) is rebuilt with the
54 final $VERSION number (and the resulting "new" version is re-tagged
55 in CVS). $VERSION is registered with the Bugzilla, and all
56 $VERSION-preX are removed (from now on, bugs against -preX are
59 4) once the new release is complete and uploaded, announcements on
60 freshmeat, the dia web site, the dia mailing list,
61 gnome-announce-list@gnome.org and maybe a gnotices story
62 (news.gnome.org) are made. Alerting the package maintainers for the
63 various distributions is also a good idea, get names from MAINTAINERS
64 and update those who have changed.
66 5) the CVS HEAD freeze is lifted one week /after/ the release is
67 generally available, unless a release critical bug is discovered in
68 the release. If the latter is the case, a new, fixed "brown bag" release is
69 released and announced as soon as possible (extending the one-week
70 delay on the CVS HEAD thaw).
74 1. make sure you have up to date build tools installed on the system.
75 Libtool is an important one, as new releases add support for new
77 2. make sure "make distcheck" runs to completion. With automake >=
78 1.5, the checks also make sure "make uninstall" removes all files
80 3. check to see if the tarball builds in normal and --enable-gnome
81 modes (this task should disapear with the move to 2.0; there is no
82 reason to have separate dialog and menu code).
83 4. Upload to ftp.gnome.org. This is basically just scp'ing the
84 tarball to widget.gnome.org, then running a command like
85 "install-module dia-0.90.tar.gz", which will create bz2
86 tarballs, diffs to the previous version, and signal the ftp mirrors
87 (currently just ftp.gnome.org and planetmirror.com) to synchronise.
92 agreeing on how to properly handle the case of having only ten two-decimal
93 place version numbers until we hit 1.0
98 These files need to be updated at every release:
103 doc/en/dia-manual.sgml?
104 dia.spec (note that the preN should go in release, not ver.
109 Remember to also update the webpages. In particular, the download page,
110 the NEWS page and the FAQ needs updating.