tor/doc/HACKING/ReleasingTor.md

Putting out a new release

Here are the steps that the maintainer should take when putting out a new Tor release:

=== 0. Preliminaries

1. Get at least three of weasel/arma/Sebastian/Sina to put the new version number in their approved versions list.

=== I. Make sure it works

1. Use it for a while, as a client, as a relay, as a hidden service, and as a directory authority. See if it has any obvious bugs, and resolve those.

As applicable, merge the maint-X branch into the release-X branch.

1. Are all of the jenkins builders happy? See jenkins.torproject.org.

What about the bsd buildbots?

     See http://buildbot.pixelminers.net/builders/

What about Coverity Scan?

Is make check-spaces happy?

Does 'make distcheck' complain?

How about 'make test-stem' and 'make test-network'?

   - Are all those tests still happy with --enable-expensive-hardening ?

Any memory leaks?

=== II. Write a changelog.

1. Gather the changes/* files into a changelog entry, rewriting many of them and reordering to focus on what users and funders would find interesting and understandable.

   1. Make sure that everything that wants a bug number has one. Make sure that everything which is a bugfix says what version it was a bugfix on.

   2. Concatenate them.

   3. Sort them by section. Within each section, sort by "version it's a bugfix on", else by numerical ticket order.

   4. Clean them up:

   Standard idioms: Fixes bug 9999; bugfix on 0.3.3.3-alpha.

   One space after a period.

   Make stuff very terse

   Make sure each section name ends with a colon

   Describe the user-visible problem right away

   Mention relevant config options by name. If they're rare or unusual, remind people what they're for

   Avoid starting lines with open-paren

   Present and imperative tense: not past.

   'Relays', not 'servers' or 'nodes' or 'Tor relays'.

   "Stop FOOing", not "Fix a bug where we would FOO".

   Try not to let any given section be longer than about a page. Break up long sections into subsections by some sort of common subtopic. This guideline is especially important when organizing Release Notes for new stable releases.

   If a given changes stanza showed up in a different release (e.g. maint-0.2.1), be sure to make the stanzas identical (so people can distinguish if these are the same change).

   1. Merge them in.

   2. Clean everything one last time.

   3. Run ./scripts/maint/format_changelog.py to make it prettier.

2. Compose a short release blurb to highlight the user-facing changes. Insert said release blurb into the ChangeLog stanza. If it's a stable release, add it to the ReleaseNotes file too. If we're adding to a release-0.2.x branch, manually commit the changelogs to the later git branches too.

3. If there are changes that require or suggest operator intervention before or during the update, mail operators (either dirauth or relays list) with a headline that indicates that an action is required or appreciated.

4. If you're doing the first stable release in a series, you need to create a ReleaseNotes for the series as a whole. To get started there, copy all of the Changelog entries from the series into a new file, and run ./scripts/maint/sortChanges.py on it. That will group them by category. Then kill every bugfix entry for fixing bugs that were introduced within that release series; those aren't relevant changes since the last series. At that point, it's time to start sorting and condensing entries. (Generally, we don't edit the text of existing entries, though.)

=== III. Making the source release.

1. In maint-0.2.x, bump the version number in configure.ac and run scripts/maint/updateVersions.pl to update version numbers in other places, and commit. Then merge maint-0.2.x into release-0.2.x.

(NOTE: To bump the version number, edit configure.ac, and then run either make, or perl scripts/maint/updateVersions.pl, depending on your version.)

1. Make distcheck, put the tarball up somewhere, and tell #tor about it. Wait a while to see if anybody has problems building it. Try to get Sebastian or somebody to try building it on Windows.

=== IV. Commit, upload, announce

1. Sign the tarball, then sign and push the git tag:

   gpg -ba <the_tarball>
   git tag -u <keyid> tor-0.2.x.y-status
   git push origin tag tor-0.2.x.y-status
   

2. scp the tarball and its sig to the dist website, i.e. /srv/dist-master.torproject.org/htdocs/ on dist-master. When you want it to go live, you run "static-update-component dist.torproject.org" on dist-master.

Edit include/versions.wmi and Makefile to note the new version.

(NOTE: Due to #17805, there can only be one stable version listed at once. Nonetheless, do not call your version "alpha" if it is stable, or people will get confused.)

1. Email the packagers (cc'ing tor-assistants) that a new tarball is up. The current list of packagers is:

   • {weasel,gk,mikeperry} at torproject dot org
   • {blueness} at gentoo dot org
   • {paul} at invizbox dot io
   • {lfleischer} at archlinux dot org
   • {Nathan} at freitas dot net
   • {mike} at tig dot as

   • {tails-rm} at boum dot org (for pre-release announcments)

   • {tails-dev} at boum dot org (for at-release announcements)

2. Add the version number to Trac. To do this, go to Trac, log in, select "Admin" near the top of the screen, then select "Versions" from the menu on the left. At the right, there will be an "Add version" box. By convention, we enter the version in the form "Tor: 0.2.2.23-alpha" (or whatever the version is), and we select the date as the date in the ChangeLog.

3. Mail the release blurb and ChangeLog to tor-talk (development release) or tor-announce (stable).

Post the changelog on the the blog as well. You can generate a blog-formatted version of the changelog with the -B option to format-changelog.

When you post, include an estimate of when the next TorBrowser releases will come out that include this Tor release.

=== V. Aftermath and cleanup

1. If it's a stable release, bump the version number in the maint-x.y.z branch to "newversion-dev", and do a merge -s ours merge to avoid taking that change into master. Do a similar merge -s theirs merge to get the change (and only that change) into release. (Some of the build scripts require that maint merge cleanly into release.)

2. Forward-port the ChangeLog (and ReleaseNotes if appropriate).

3. Keep an eye on the blog post, to moderate comments and answer questions.