Pacemaker Release Checklist

Pull request policies during release cycle

• After the rc1 release, only bug fixes should be allowed into the release branch (features go into the main branch).
• After some later release candidate, only regression fixes should be allowed into the release branch (all other bug fixes, and features, go into the main branch).
• After the final release, all pull requests should be against the main branch.

Testing

All of this should be done on the main branch just before rc1, addressing any issues found. Selected parts can be repeated for later release candidates when appropriate.

• Run all regression tests (including fencing, exec, and remote; see cts/README.md).
• Run a long CTS lab (see cts/README.md) against a several-node cluster using CTSlab.py or a wrapper such as cts/cluster_test or your own.
• Perform static analysis. The devel directory has make targets for convenience (cppcheck, clang, and coverity or coverity-corp).
• Verify OCF agent meta-data is valid (replacing $OCF_RNG_SCHEMA with the path to ra-api.rng from a local checkout of the OCF-spec source repository):
  • make RNG="$OCF_RNG_SCHEMA" -C agents/ocf validate
• Verify formatted output args using fosa.
• Perform a rolling upgrade from any supported previous version.
• Optionally, compare scheduler timings against the previous release to make sure there are no large unexplained regressions. From a checkout, run the first command below for the old and new builds, then run the second command to compare the two. Minimize variation however you can (use same host, don't do anything else while running it, maybe try to seed the disk read cache). There still is a good bit of variation from run to run so it is unclear at this point what is significant.
  • PCMK_schema_directory=xml tools/crm_simulate --profile cts/scheduler/xml --repeat 1000 > ~/crm_simulate.$VERSION.out
  • tools/pcmk_simtimes ~/crm_simulate.*.out -s 0.1 -p 5
• Optionally, check the current buildability in COPR (default sort starts with the newest builds, optionally use pacemaker in the filter box, check at least Git branch field on the details page, optionally also git commit encoded in the R part of package identifier)

Repeat until final

All work is in the release branch (2.1).

rc1 only

• Pull in the main branch
  • If this is a new major or minor release, create the release branch, and ensure CI gets updated to check it.
• Things that don't need to be done every release but are helpful every now and then:
  • cts/cts-scheduler --update (only if the tests already all pass!), to update whitespace usage in expected output (which is ignored by the regression tests, but can help manual comparisons)
  • (Do not do this until we can raise the minimum automake dependency to 1.14) make -C maint gnulib-update to update the code we bundle from gnulib
• Make sure that the Pacemaker feature set has been bumped appropriately for code changes in this release (the minor version if any new features require DC support including most schema changes, and the minor-minor version if any new features at all have been added including command-line tool arguments).
• Make sure that PCMK__API_VERSION in include/crm/common/output_internal.h is equal to the highest version in the source file names in xml/api.
• Update translation files: make -C po update-po
• Update xml/README.md for pacemaker-to-schema version mapping, if needed
  • To see schema changes since last release: git log --no-merges Pacemaker-$LAST_VERSION.. xml
• Ensure that significant new features are documented in Pacemaker Explained (with "(since <version>)" for new syntax).
• Run maint/bumplibs to update shared library (libtool) versions for changes since last point release, which will show all library diffs since the last release and ask whether the changes involve compatible public API additions, incompatible public API additions/removals, or fixes. Verify the script's changes (which it displays at the end).
  • Versions can be updated again for later release candidates if they break the public API (which should be avoided unless absolutely necessary) by running the script with Pacemaker-$PREVIOUS_RC_TAG as the argument.
  • For details about library versioning, see Updating library version information.
• Update m4/version.m4 to new release version, without -rc suffix.
  • When bumping the major or minor release number, epub_identifier in doc/sphinx/conf.py.in needs to be updated
  • At some point, it might be worthwhile to include the -rc suffix for better differentiation of release candidates, but that will need a lot of testing to see how it affects RPMS, version comparisons, etc.
• Update the Changelog:
  • make -C maint LAST_RELEASE=Pacemaker-$LAST_VERSION changelog and then edit manually (and heavily!) for user audience

Later release candidates only

• Update the Changelog:
  • make -C maint LAST_RELEASE=Pacemaker-$LAST_RC_VERSION changelog and then edit for user audience

Final release only

• Locally generate and proof all documentation that will be uploaded to the website.
• Update Changelog: merge the rc entries into a single entry
  • to update summary: make -C maint LAST_RELEASE=Pacemaker-$LAST_VERSION NEXT_RELEASE=Pacemaker-$NEXT_VERSION summary

All release candidates and final release

• Make a github release:
  • Go to Pacemaker releases on Github and select Draft a new release
  • Choose a tag: Pacemaker-X.Y.Z-rcN or Pacemaker-X.Y.Z
  • Target: release branch
  • Release title: "Pacemaker X.Y.Z - Release Candidate N" or "Pacemaker X.Y.Z - Final"
  • Describe this release: copy relevant part of ChangeLog
  • This is a pre-release: check if this is an rc
  • Can save as draft to preview if desired

• If this release fixed any regressions, update the descriptions on GitHub of the releases that introduced the regressions

• Publicize
  • See for example https://lists.clusterlabs.org/pipermail/users/2019-October/026482.html (to generate a list of contributors, run make -C maint LAST_RELEASE=Pacemaker-$PREVIOUS authors or equivalently, git log Pacemaker-$PREVIOUS..Pacemaker-$RC --format='%an'|sort -u)
  • If this is rc1, announce request policy on developers@clusterlabs.org (features into main, fixes into release branch), e.g. https://lists.clusterlabs.org/pipermail/developers/2019-October/002230.html

• Pull release branch back into main branch and merge.

• If this is an rc, wait for feedback, and address any reported issues. About 1-4 weeks between release candidates is good.

After final release

• export RSYNC_RSH="ssh -p $PORT" appropriately for the ClusterLabs website host.

• git fetch upstream --tags so the make targets can use the new release tag instead of commit ID.

• Run make -C doc www to regenerate most documentation on ClusterLabs.org website (doxygen, indexed source, Clusters From Scratch, Pacemaker Explained, etc.).

• Run make -C doc LAST_RELEASE=Pacemaker-$PREVIOUS_RELEASE TAG=Pacemaker-$NEW_RELEASE abi-www to generate the ABI compatibility report.

• Update on this wiki: ReleaseMatrix, ReleaseCalendar, Pacemaker feature set

• In the ClusterLabs project manager, update all relevant tasks from "Merged" status to "Released" (do Advanced Search for Merged status and release tag, then select all and bulk edit), and create the next milestone(s) (which will be the release(s) after next)

• Announce request policy on developers@clusterlabs.org (all requests into main).

• Edit any pull requests open against the release branch to submit against main.