Releasing new versions

In order to release new version you need to be owner of all the gems at RubyGems, ask one of the owners to add you before releasing. (Try gem owner decidim).

Remember to follow the Gitflow branching workflow.

Create the stable branch for the release

  1. Go to develop with git checkout develop

  2. Create the release branch git checkout -b release/x.y-stable && git push origin release/x.y-stable.

  3. If required, add the release branch to Crowdin so that any pending translations will generate a PR to this branch.

Mark develop as the reference to the next release:

  1. Go back to develop with git checkout develop

  2. Turn develop into the dev branch for the next release:

    1. Update .decidim-version to the new dev development version: x.y.z.dev, where x.y.z is the new semver number for the next version

    2. Run bin/rake update_versions, this will update all references to the new version.

    3. Run bin/rake bundle, this will update all the Gemfile.lock files

    4. Run bin/rake webpack, this will update the JavaScript bundle.

  3. Update SECURITY.md and change the supported version to the new version.

  4. Update the CHANGELOG.MD. At the top you should have an Unreleased header with the Added, Changed, Fixed and Removed empty sections. After that, the header with the current version and link with the same beforementioned sections and a Previous versions header at the bottom that links to the previous minor release stable branch.

  ## [Unreleased](https://github.com/decidim/decidim/tree/HEAD)

  ### Added

  ### Changed

  ### Fixed

  ### Removed

  ## [v0.XX.0](https://github.com/decidim/decidim/releases/tag/v0.XX.0)

  ### Added
  ...

  ## Previous versions

  Please check [0.XX-stable](https://github.com/decidim/decidim/blob/release/0.XX-stable/CHANGELOG.md) for previous changes.

  1. Push the changes git add . && git commit -m "Bump develop to next release version" && git push origin develop

Producing the CHANGELOG.md

Look for the "Bump develop to next release version" commit sha1. You can do it either visually with gitk .decidim-version or by blaming git blame .decidim-version.

Here you have different options to see what happened from one revision to another:

git log v0.20.0..v0.20.1 --grep " (#[0-9]\+)" --oneline
git log 7579b34f55e4dcfff43c160edbbf14a32bf643b2..HEAD --grep " (#[0-9]\+)" --oneline
git log 7579b34f55e4dcfff43c160edbbf14a32bf643b2..HEAD --grep " (#[0-9]\+)"
git log 7579b34f55e4dcfff43c160edbbf14a32bf643b2..HEAD --pretty=format:"commit %h%n%n%s%n%nNotes:%n%n%N"  > full_log

That last command is the one used to generate log content for the GitLogParser. The GitLogParser translates git-log entries into our CHANGELOG.mv entries. It also groups the commits if they have a git note with the format: {groupname}: {affected_modules}, for example Fixed: **decidim-core**, **decidim-proposals**. This last example will add the commit to the "Fixed" group and prefix the commit message with "- decidim-core, decidim-proposals". The number at the end of each commit message is also replaced for a markdown link to the commit.

There’s how to run the parser rake task:

# remember to have the latest commits and notes locally
git pull && git fetch origin refs/notes/*:refs/notes/*
# generate the git log in the expected format
git log 7579b34f55e4dcfff43c160edbbf14a32bf643b2..HEAD --pretty=format:"commit %h%n%n%s%n%nNotes:%n%n%N"  > full_log
# parse the git log in the expected format and produce grouped changelog entries
bin/rake parse_git_log[full_log]

You can now copy+paste the output of this task to each of groups in the CHANGELOG.md.

Release Candidates

Release Candidates are the same as beta versions. They should be ready to go to production, but publicly released just before in order to be widely tested.

If this is a Release Candidate version release, the steps to follow are:

  1. Checkout the release stable branch git checkout release/x.y-stable.

  2. Update .decidim-version to the new version x.y.z.rc1

  3. Run bin/rake update_versions, this will update all references to the new version.

  4. Run bin/rake bundle, this will update all the Gemfile.lock files

  5. Run bin/rake webpack, this will update the JavaScript bundle.

  6. Commit all the changes: git add . && git commit -m "Bump to rcXX version" && git push origin release/x.y-stable.

  7. Tag the release candidate with git tag vX.Y.Z.rcN && git push origin vX.Y.Z.rcN.

  8. Usually, at this point, the release branch is deployed to meta-decidim during, at least, one week to validate the stability of the version.

During the validation period

  1. During the validation period, bugfixes must be implemented directly to the current release/x.y.z-stable branch and ported to develop.

  2. During the validation period, translations to the officially supported languages must be added to Crowdin and, when completed, merged into release/x.y.z-stable.

Major/Minor versions

Release Candidates will be tested in a production server (usually meta-decidim) during some period of time (a week at least), when they are considered ready, it is time for them to be merged into master:

  1. Checkout the release stable branch git checkout release/x.y-stable.

  2. Update .decidim-version by removing the .rcN suffix, leaving a clean version number like x.y.z

  3. Run bin/rake update_versions, this will update all references to the new version.

  4. Run bin/rake bundle, this will update all the Gemfile.lock files

  5. Run bin/rake webpack, this will update the JavaScript bundle.

  6. Commit all the changes: git add . && git commit -m "Bump to v0.XX.0 final version" && git push origin release/x.y-stable.

  7. Create the PR for the new version.

    1. git checkout master && git pull && git checkout -b release/x.y.z

    2. The following strategy has been discarded because it produces a lot of problems (still needs manual intervention for many files, backported commits via cherry-pick are applied twice, etc..)

      1. git merge release/x.y-stable

      2. git checkout --theirs *

      3. git checkout --theirs .github/* \.*

      4. Review changes in CHANGELOG.md, manually update and create a "changelog" commit if required.

    3. The simpler is to have two clones of the project, let’s name current clone A, in release/x.y.z. The clone B is in release/x.y-stable. Now do the following from a file explorer

      1. Remove all files except .git from clone A.

      2. Copy all files except .git from clone B.

      3. Paste all files except .git to clone A.

      4. Commit the differences to be merged to master: git add -A && git commit -m "Merge release 0.x.y"

    4. git push origin release/x.y.z

    5. Create the PR. The base for this PR should be master, but GitHub may crash if there are a lot of changes. As a workaround create the branch against develop and, when created, change the base to master.

    6. Still don’t merge it.

  8. Before merging the PR to upgrade master, check that the stable branch for the previous version exists. For instance, if we are going to release v0.22.0, there should be a release/0.21-stable branch in the repository. If such branch does not exists, it has to be created now, before merging the new release. So, if this is the release of v0.22.0, branch off release/0.21-stable from master. These stable branches will be able to receive bugfixes, backports and will be the origin of patch releases for older releases.

  9. Merge (after proper peer review) the PR to master and remove release/x.y.z branch.

  10. Run git checkout master && git pull && bin/rake release_all, this will create all the tags, push the commits and tags and release the gems to RubyGems.

  11. Once all the gems are published you should create a new release at this repository, just go to the releases page and create a new one.

  12. Create the stable branch for the current version if it does not exist. From master: git checkout -b release/x.y-stable && git push origin release/x.y-stable.

  13. Update Decidim’s Docker repository as explained in the Docker images section below.

  14. Update Crowdin synchronization configuration with Github:

    1. Add the new release/x.y-stable branch.

    2. Remove from Crowdin branches that are not officially supported anymore. That way they don’t synchronize with Github.

  15. Update the CHANGELOG.MD in release/x.y-stable. At the top you should have an Unreleased header with the Added, Changed, Fixed and Removed empty sections. After that, the header with the current version. Add the Unreleased section or create the new current version section.

Releasing patch versions

Releasing new versions from a release/x.y-stable branch is quite easy. The process is very similar from releasing a new Decidim version:

  1. Checkout the branch you want to release: git checkout -b release/x.y-stable

  2. Update .decidim-version to the new version number.

  3. Run bin/rake update_versions, this will update all references to the new version.

  4. Run bin/rake bundle, this will update all the Gemfile.lock files

  5. Run bin/rake webpack, this will update the JavaScript bundle.

  6. Update CHANGELOG.MD. At the top you should have an Unreleased header with the Added, Changed, Fixed and Removed empty sections. After that, the header with the current version and link like ## [0.20.0](https://github.com/decidim/decidim/tree/v0.20.0) and again the headers for the Added, Changed, Fixed and Removed sections.

  7. Commit all the changes: git add . && git commit -m "Prepare VERSION release"

  8. Run bin/rake release_all, this will create all the tags, push the commits and tags and release the gems to RubyGems.

  9. Once all the gems are published you should create a new release at this repository, just go to the releases page and create a new one.

  10. Update Decidim’s Docker repository as explained in the Docker images section.

Docker images for each release

  1. After each release, you should update our Docker repository so new images are build for the new release. To do it, create a PR that just updates DECIDIM_VERSION at circle.yml. Then the continous integration circleci build will generate the images and they will be published to docker hub when the PR is merged.