How to make a release

Note:

• work in progress, trying to document how releasing whoosh works
• created in the hope to make the release process better and to avoid forgetting something
• if you find issues / missing stuff: please fix :)

Creating a maintenance release

1. switch to correct branch, e.g. git checkout origin/2.4x -b 2.4x
2. simple test run: nosetests
3. check __version__ in whoosh/__init__.py

• note: the version number should be already correct (see below)

4. check and update the docs/source/releases/*.rst

• list fixed issues
• list new features

5. is the other documentation (e.g. api docs) also up-to-date?
6. check for completeness:

• new files? MANIFEST.in
• new code packages/modules? setup.py

7. Tag the release, e.g.: git tag -a v1.4 -m "Added tag 2.4.2"
8. create a clean temp clone: git clone whoosh whoosh-rel

• touches all files so their mtime is current, this avoids trouble for people not using --force option with setup.py install
• only stuff in the repo is in whoosh-rel dir, no other crap

9. Switch to clean repo / right branch: cd whoosh-rel ; git checkout 2.4x
10. (build package, install the package into fresh virtualenv, run tests)
11. Upload files to pypi: python setup.py sdist --formats zip,gztar upload
12. Go back to normal repo: cd ../whoosh
13. Update __version__ in whoosh/__init__.py so that the current repo code has a higher version number than the current release.
14. git commit -m "Bumping version number."
15. switch back to development branch, e.g. git checkout default

• avoids accidental development commits to maintenance branch

16. merge maintenance branch into default branch: git merge 2.4x

• gets all fixes, doc updates, new tags, etc.
• problem: also gets the wrong version number from maint branch, must be fixed before committing the merge to the default branch

17. Announcements:

• whoosh mailing list
• (add more?)

Branches in the repository

• 2.4x = release maintenance branch for 2.4.x (do simple bug fixes there). Do not merge default into maintenance branch.
• default = development branch (do development there, but keep it usable). Now and then, merge maintenance branch into default (so default gets the bug fixes also).
• xxxxx = branch for critical development (when doing big stuff, breaking things, unsafe outcome: create a separate branch, merge into default on good outcome)