Added documentation for automatic deployment

Closes #490

Signed-off-by: Christian Wolf <github@christianwolf.email>

docs/dev/deployment.md

@@ -1,2 +1,81 @@
 # Automatic deployment using Github Actions
 
+* TOC
+{:toc}
+
+## Step-by-step guide to create a new release
+The deployment of new releases is carried out using github actions.
+This documentation should serve as a step-by-step basis instructions how to publish a new version.
+
+Anyways these steps **do not cover any topics related to testing verification** of the functionality.
+The person creating the release will have to make sure though other means that the version generated is valid.
+
+### Preparations
+
+You should have a local version of the repository at hands.
+Check out the `master` branch and make sure it is up to date with the upstream branch.
+
+### Create release branch
+
+It is advised to create a new branch to prepare the release.
+Through this text we assume, the release `1.2.4` should be generated while the last version was `1.2.3`.
+So you might want to create a branch `release/1.2.4` from master.
+```
+git checkout -b release/1.2.4 master
+```
+
+### Update the changelog
+
+In the release branch you will have to prepare the changelog file.
+This means, you have to add a new second level heading to the unreleased changes so far.
+You might need to add
+```
+## 1.2.4 - YYYY-mm-dd
+```
+as one of the first few lines with `YYYY-mm-dd` the current date.
+
+Commit the changes and push them to github.
+
+### Create pull request
+
+Now, you should create a pull request to merge the changes in the new `release/1.2.4` branch into `stable`.
+Do not yet merge the PR.
+Here is the last chance to do some testing and verification.
+
+### Let the actions do its magic
+
+Now the critical part comes.
+As soon as you merge the PR you set the gears into action and a new release will be published both on github and the NC appstore.
+
+The version number that is going to be generated **depends on the commit message of the merge commit into `stable`**.
+So before clicking on *Merge* be sure what you are doing.
+
+By default you will generate a new patch version.
+So the third part of our version would be incremented.
+If you want to generate a different version type like minor (second part incremented) or major version (first part incremented), you need to make this visible.
+You have to put a keyword on a line in the commit message to select a version type other than a patch version.
+
+| Keyword | Version type | Generated version |
+|---|---|---|
+| no keyword | patch version | 1.2.4 |
+| `%MINOR_VERSION%` | minor version | 1.3.0 |
+| `%MAJOR_VERSION%` | major version | 2.0.0 |
+
+The automatic deployment action will take over once you push to the `stable` branch.
+The following actions will take place after the merge:
+
+1. Some fixed parameters will be pre-filled in the codebase with the version number and a commit is generated on the `stable` branch.
+1. A new tag `v1.2.4` is generated to save the current state in history on the `stable` branch.
+1. The changes introduced in the commit are merged back into the `master` branch.
+1. A github release is published and the compiled files are uploaded as a tarball.
+1. A release in the nextcloud appstore is registered and published.
+
+## Implementation details
+
+The most recent version is stored in the files `major`, `minor`, and `patch` in `.github/actions/deploy/`.
+These files should contain the major, minor and patch number of the *current* version known.
+You should not alter these files manually, the action script will handle these files accordingly.
+
+If you need to put the version string automatically somewhere in the code base, you might want to have a look at `fill-in-data.sh` in `.githib/actions/deploy`.
+This file will du the changes to the files that need version-updates.
+You should consider committing the changes in `create-version.sh` in the same folder if the file is already under version control to update the `master` branch accordingly.

docs/dev/index.md

@@ -1,5 +1,9 @@
 # Development documentation
 
+This documentation should contain dedicated information about the cookbook app.
+No general information about the internals of nextcloud should be published here as these tend to change and thus get dated.
+Instead we want to reference the official documentation on [docs.nextcloud.com](https://docs.nextcloud.com), especially the development manual.
+
 ## Github related information
 
 - [Automatic deployment of new releases](deployment)