Podman (and podman-remote) versioning is mostly based on semantic-versioning
standards.
Significant versions
are tagged, including release candidates (rc
).
All relevant minor releases (vX.Y
) have their own branches. The latest
development efforts occur on the master branch. Branches with a
rhel suffix are use for long-term support of downstream RHEL releases.
- You have push access to the upstream podman repository
- You understand all basic
git
operations and concepts, like creating commits, local vs. remote branches, rebasing, and conflict resolution. - You have access to your public and private GPG keys.
- You have reliable internet access (i.e. not the public WiFi link at McDonalds)
- Other podman maintainers are online/available for assistance if needed.
- For a major release, you have 4-8 hours of time available, most of which will be dedicated to writing release notes.
- For a minor or patch release, you have 2-4 hours of time available (minimum depends largely on the speed/reliability of automated testing)
These releases always begin from master, and are contained in a branch
named with the major and minor version. Major release branches
begin in a release candidate phase, with prospective release tags being
created with an -rc
suffix. There may be multiple release candidate
tags before the final/official major version is tagged and released.
Significant minor and patch level releases are normally
branched from master, but there are occsaional exceptions.
Additionally, these branches may be named with -rhel
(or another)
suffix to signify a specialized purpose. For example, -rhel
indicates
a release intended for downstream RHEL consumption.
Non-release versions may occasionally appear tagged on a branch, without the typical (major) receive media postings or artifact distribution. For example, as required for the (separate) RHEL release process. Otherwise these tags are simply milestones of reference purposes and may generally be safely ignored.
Note: This is intended as a guideline, and generalized process. Not all steps are applicable in all situations. Not all steps are spelled with complete minutiae.
-
Make a
[CI:DOCS]
release notes pull request.-
Ensure any/all intended PR's are completed and merged prior to any processing of release notes. Ensure your local clone is fully up to date with the remote upstream (
git remote update
). -
Check out (create) a local working branch for a release-notes PR, based on the latest
upstream/master
or pre-existing version-named branch - for example, if this is an additional release-candidate you might usevX.Y.Z-rc2
; Note this is a local branch name, an upstream branch would never contain the-rc?
suffix. -
Find all merged PRs since the last release, which were performed by the merge-robot. For example, given the commit range
1234...5678
you would rungit log --oneline --author=openshift-merge-robot 1234...5678
. Keep this list open/available for reference as you edit. -
Edit
RELEASE_NOTES.md
-
If operating on a release-candidate, be sure to remove any not-applicable items/sections. For example, those brought in because of backports.
-
Add/update the version-section of with sub-sections for Features (new functionality), Changes (Altered podman behaviors), Bugfixes (self-explanatory), API (All related features, changes, and bugfixes), and Misc (include any major library bumps, e.g.
c/buildah
,c/storage
,c/common
, etc). -
Use your merge-bot reference PR-listing to examine each PR in turn, adding an entry for it into the appropriate section.
- Be sure to link any issue the PR fixed.
- Do not include any PRs that are only documentation or test/automation changes.
- Do not include any PRs that fix bugs which we introduced due to new features/enhancements. In other words, if it was working, broke, then got fixed, there's no need to mention those items.
-
-
Commit and sign the
RELEASE_NOTES.md
changes, using the descriptionCreate release notes for vX.Y.Z
(whereX
,Y
, andZ
are the actual version numbers). -
Push your working branch to your github fork and create a new pull request.
- Ensure you properly select the base branch if not master.
For example,
vX.y.Z
. - Before submitting the new PR, update the title with the
prefix
[CI:DOCS]
to avoid triggering lengthy automated testing.
- Ensure you properly select the base branch if not master.
For example,
-
If this is a release on a pre-existing version-named branch (e.x. release-candidate or
-rhel
), open another PR against the upstream master branch. This is needed to ensure the new notes are present for future releases.
-
-
Create a new upstream release branch (if none already exist).
- After the release-notes pull requests have merged, a release branch is needed. Branching ensures all changes are curated before inclusion in the release, and no new features land after the release-candidate phases are complete.
- Ensure your local clone is fully up to date with the remote upstream
(
git remote update
). Switch to this branch (git checkout upstream/master
). - Make a new local branch for the release based on master. For example,
git checkout -b vX.Y
. WhereX.Y
represent the complete release version-name, including any suffix (if any) like-rhel
. DO NOT include any-rc
suffix in the branch name. - Edit the
.cirrus.yml
file, changing theDEST_BRANCH
value (under theenv
section) to the new, complete branch name (e.x.vX.Y
). Commit and sign, using the descriptionCirrus: Update operating branch
. - Push the new branch otherwise unmodified (
git push upstream vX.Y
). - Automation will begin executing on the branch immediately. Because
the repository allows out-of-sequence PR merging, it is possible that
merge order introduced bugs/defects. To establish a clean
baseline, observe the initial CI run on the branch for any unexpected
failures. This can be done by going directly to
https://cirrus-ci.com/github/containers/podman/vX.Y
- If there are CI test or automation boops that need fixing on the branch, attend to them using normal PR process (to master first, then backport changes to the new branch). Ideally, CI should be "green" on the new branch before proceeding.
-
Create a new branch-verification Cirrus-Cron entry.
- This is to ensure CI's VM image timestamps are refreshed. Without this, the VM images will be permanently pruned after 60 days of inactivity and are hard/impossible to re-create accurately.
- Go to https://cirrus-ci.com/github/containers/podman and press the "gear" (Repository Settings) button on the top-right.
- At the bottom of the settings page is a table of cron-job names, branches, schedule, and recent status. Below that is an editable new-entry line.
- Set the new job's
name
andbranch
to the name of new release branch. - Set the
expression
using the formX X X ? * 1-6
where 'X' is a number between 0-23 and not already taken by another job in the table. The 1-hour interval is used because it takes about that long for the job to run. - Add the new job by pressing the
+
button on the right-side of the new-entry line.
-
Update version numbers and push tag
TODO: This process can be simplified by updating the script for the "Optional Release Test" such that it tests the first commit, not the second. In this way, pushing twice to the same PR won't be required.
-
Assuming CI Test and automation ran clean on the release branch, update your local repo to be fully up to date with the remote upstream (
git remote update
). Check out a local copy of the upstream release branch (git checkout upstream/vX.Y
). -
Create a new local working-branch to develop the release PR,
git checkout -b bump_vX.Y.Z
. -
Look up the COMMIT ID of the last release,
git log -1 $(git tag | sort -V | tail -1)
. -
Edit
version/version.go
and bump theVersion
value to the new release version. If there were API changes, also bumpAPIVersion
value. Make sure to also bump the version in the swagger.yamlpkg/api/server/docs.go
and to add a new entry indocs/source/Reference.rst
for major and minor releases. -
Commit this and sign the commit (
git commit -a -s -S
). The commit message should beBump to vX.Y.Z
(using the actual version numbers). -
Push this single change to your github fork, and make a new PR, being careful to select the proper release branch as its base.
-
Wait for all automated tests pass (including on an RC-branch PR). Re-running and/or updating code as needed.
-
In the PR, under the Checks tab, locate and clock on the Cirrus-CI task
Optional Release Test
. In the right-hand window pane, click thetrigger
button and wait for the test to go green. This is a critical step which confirms the commit is worthy of becoming a release. -
Tag the
Bump to vX.Y.Z
commit as a release by runninggit tag -s -m 'vX.Y.Z' vX.Y.Z $HASH
where$HASH
is specified explicitly and carefully, to avoid (basically) unfixable accidents (if they are pushed). -
Change
version/version.go
again. This time, bump the patch version and re-add the-dev
suffix to indicate this is a non-released version of Podman. -
Change
contrib/spec/podman.spec.in
, bumping patch number ofVersion
. -
Commit these changes with the message
Bump to X.Y.Z-dev
. -
Push your local branch to your github fork (and the PR) again.
-
The PR should now have two commits that look very similar to containers#7787
-
Wait for at least all the "Build" and "Verify" (or similar) CI Testing steps to complete successfully. No need to wait for complete integration 4and system-testing (it was already done on substantially the same code, above).
-
Merge the PR (or ask someone else to review and merge, to be safer).
-
Note: This is the last point where any test-failures can be addressed by code changes. After pushing the new version-tag upstream, no further changes can be made to the code without lots of unpleasant efforts. Please seek assistance if needed, before proceeding.
-
Assuming the "Bump to ..." PR merged successfully, and you're really confident the correct commit has been tagged, push it with
git push upstream vX.Y.Z
-
-
Locate, Verify release testing is proceeding
- When the tag was pushed, an automated build was created. Locate this
by starting from
https://github.com/containers/podman/tags
and finding the recent entry for the pushed tag. Under the tag name will be a timestamp and abbrieviated commit hash, for example<> 5b2585f
. Click the commit-hash link. - In the upper-left most corner, just to the left of the "Bump to vX.Y" text, will be a small status icon (Yellow circle, Red "X", or green check). Click this, to open a small pop-up/overlay window listing all the status checks.
- In the small pop-up/overlay window, press the "Details" link on one of the Cirrus-CI status check entries (doesn't matter which one).
- On the following page, in the lower-right pane, will be a "View more details on Cirrus CI" link, click this.
- A Cirrus-CI task details page will open, click the button labeled "View All Tasks".
- Keep this page open to monitor its progress and for use in future steps.
- When the tag was pushed, an automated build was created. Locate this
by starting from
-
Bump master
-dev
version- If you made a release branch and bumped major or minor version Complete the "Update version numbers and push tag" steps above on the master branch. Bump the minor version and set the patch version to 0. For example, after pushing the v2.2.0 release, master should be set to v2.3.0-dev.
- Create a "Bump to vX.Y.Z-dev" commit with these changes.
- Bump the version number in
README.md
(still on on master) to reflect the new release. Commit these changes. - Create a PR with the above commits, and oversee it's merging.
-
Create Github Release entry and upload assets
-
Return to the Cirrus-CI Build page for the new release tag, confirm (or wait for) it to complete, re-running any failed tasks as appropriate.
-
For anything other than an RC, the release artifacts need to be published along with the release. These can be built locally using:
$ git checkout vX.Y.Z $ make podman-remote-release-darwin_amd64.zip \ podman-remote-release-darwin_arm64.zip \ podman-remote-release-windows_amd64.zip \ podman.msi \ podman-remote-static $ mv podman-* bin/ $ cd bin/ $ tar -cvzf podman-remote-static.tar.gz podman-remote-static $ sha256sum *.zip *.msi *.tar.gz > shasums
-
The
podman-vX.Y.Z.dmg
file is produced manually by someone in possession of a developer signing key. -
In the directory where you downloaded the archives, run
sha256sum *.tar.gz *.zip *.msi > shasums
to generate SHA sums. -
Go to
https://github.com/containers/podman/releases/tag/vX.Y.Z
and press the "Edit Release" button. Change the name to the formvX.Y.Z
-
If this is a release candidate be certain to click the pre-release checkbox at the bottom of the page.
-
Copy and paste the release notes for the release into the body of the release.
-
Near the bottom of the page there is a box with the message “Add binaries by dropping them here or selecting them”. Use that to upload the artifacts you previously downloaded, including the
shasums
file.- podman-remote-release-darwin_amd64.zip
- podman-remote-release-darwin_arm64.zip
- podman-remote-release-windows_amd64.zip
- podman-vX.Y.Z.msi
- podman-remote-static.tar.gz
- shasums
-
Save the release.
-