Definition of Done for Simantics Platform Releases

  1. All Git repositories that are part of the Simantics release train have a branch called release/x.y.z[.w] and tag called x.y.z[.w].
  2. A change log entry is compiled from the issues in this release and made available to the general public separately for the platform and for the open products included in the release train.
  3. Roadmap is up-to-date.
  4. Tutorials are up-to-date and coherent with the platform.
  5. For all new major/minor releases, Wiki documentation is backed up (cloned).

Simantics Platform Release Process


Released Plug-in Components and Products

There are both plug-in components and products that are part of the Simantics Release Train that shall be released simultaneously to a major or minor Simantics release.

Plug-in components are installable features that are deployed online as P2 repositories for general availability. Products are deployed as ZIP files and made available online in designated locations on simantics.org.

Core components of the release train:

Plug-in components that are part of the release train:

Products that are part of the release train:

For simplicity, each of these components are versioned accoring to platform versioning, i.e. for Platform SDK 1.26.0 there will be Simantics Desktop 1.26.0, Sysdyn 1.26.0, and so on.


Release Schedule


Simantics Platform Release - Step by Step

Create release engineering issue(s) in Gitlab

Ensure that Gitlab has a release engineering issue for the branched release, such as Simantics 1.34.0 release engineering

Create release branch from selected commit

When release stabilisation starts, all relevant repositories need to be branched. When creating major/minor releases <commit> is usually a commit in the master branch. With service releases, branch from an existing release/* branch instead.

Instead of doing this clone+branch+push sequence for every SDK repository separately, please use the included release-helper.sh shell script to perform this mechanical work. The script supports many useful basic git commands which all perform the requested operation on all the release train repositories. The operations can be seen from the help text printed by the script when given no arguments:

Usage: release-helper.sh <version> <branch-name> <user-name> <command> [<command-arguments>]

Commands:
    clone                The first thing that needs to be done before anything else
                         Clones all platform repositories under directory <version>

Inspection commands:
    diff [args]          Run git diff [args] for each platform repository
    log [args]           Run git log [args] for each platform repository
    status [args]        Run git status [args] for each platform repository
    list-tags            Run git tag -l for each repository

Action:
    add
    branch               Run git branch <branch-name> for each platform repository
    checkout             Run git checkout <branch-name> for each repository
    commit
    fetch                Run git fetch --all for each repository
    pull                 Run git pull --all for each repository
    push                 Run git push origin <branch> for each repository
    push-tags            Run git push --tags for each repository
    remove-tag           Run git tag -d v<branch> for each repository
    reset [args]         Run git reset [args] for each repository
    tag                  Run git checkout <branch> and
                         git tag -a v<branch> -m "Simantics <branch> simultaneous release"
                         for each repository

Compound release commands:
    prepare-release-branch <from-branch>
        <from-branch>    the name of the branch that the codebase is currently on

Top-level release commands:
    bump-master-version <from-version> <to-version>
        <from-version>   the version string to replace
        <to-version>     the replacing new version string

    branch-release <from-branch>
        <from-branch>    the branch to create the service branch from
                         e.g. master or release/x.y.z

Begin by cloning all the repositories for working on

user=<your-git-username>
version=x.y.z
branch=release/x.y.z
./release-helper.sh $version $branch $user clone

This will create a directory called x.y.z under the current working directory and clone all the repositories under it. The first version argument is only used for the base working directory x.y.z. The second branch argument tells what branch to specify to some of the available actions, e.g. branch, checkout, etc.

Creating the release branch from master and pushing the new branches to remote happens as follows:

# When the commit messages appear, add references to created
# Gitlab release engineering issues by adding this to the commit message:
# 
# gitlab #xxxx
#
# where xxxx is the release engineering issue for the respective project
./release-helper.sh $version $branch $user branch-release master
./release-helper.sh $version $branch $user push

If you're creating a service release x.y.w from x.y.z where w > z, do this:

fromBranch=release/x.y.z
branch=release/x.y.w
./release-helper.sh $version $branch $user branch-release $fromBranch
./release-helper.sh $version $branch $user push

If you branched a new release from master, you should also bump the revision of the master branch right now to start the next release cycle in master. An example of these changes can be seen in gitweb or in review 1362. The changes include:

Perform and push the changes by running:

./release-helper.sh $version $branch $user bump-master-version 1.35.0 1.36.0
./release-helper.sh $version $branch $user push

Test Release Train build

Trigger an execution of the simantics-release-train Jenkins job with parameters

to ensure that all components of the release train build fine and to publish first versions of P2 repositories of everything online.

The release train build is currently never ran automatically. However, after following all these steps, whenever changes are pushed/merged to release/x.y.z[.w] branch in Gerrit, new Jenkins builds are triggered automatically and they will publish the results (P2 repositories/products) at their designated locations online.

[Optional reading] Release train build details

The release train build does two very important steps as the first things, i.e. build the external dependency P2 repositories for both the Platform SDK and Simupedia:

stage('External Dependencies') {
    node {
        build job: 'SDK/Deploy External Components to Web', parameters: params1
        build job: 'Member Components/Simupedia/fi.semantum.simupedia.build.p2.site', parameters: params1
    }    
}

After that it builds the Platform SDK and Simupedia before building anything else:

stage('SDK') {
    node {
        build job: 'SDK/Simantics SDK', parameters: params1
        // Note that Simantics SDK builds simupedia-git as well
    }
}

Review documentation

Documentation to review:

For each wiki page:

Review tutorials

Tag release/* branches

When the release branches are ready for the release, tag them with the tag vx.y.z[.w]:

./release-helper.sh x.y.z release/x.y.z your-git-username checkout
./release-helper.sh x.y.z release/x.y.z your-git-username pull
./release-helper.sh x.y.z release/x.y.z your-git-username tag
./release-helper.sh x.y.z release/x.y.z your-git-username push-tags

Note: release-helper.sh will supply the -m argument to git tag to create an annotated tag. Only annotated or signed tags can be pushed to Gerrit.

Backup documentation wiki databases

NOTE: This step is now deprecated since we are in the process of moving all mediawiki-based documentation into the platform git repository.

This step is only necessary for major/minor releases, not for service releases.

The wiki databases to be backed up are:

These are MediaWiki installations. The only sane way to "tag" the documentation is to back up the mysql database backing the wiki. Should the wiki be required at a later time for some reason, we'll put the documentation up then in a separate Mediawiki installation.

  1. Dump documentation wiki databases using dump-wikis.sh script.
  2. Put the generated backup x.y.z.tar.gz at /var/backup/simantics-releases/x.y.z/wiki/

Compile change log entry

Disseminate information about the release

Newsletter template:

Hello everyone,

Simantics release x.y.z[.w] has been released. Head over to
https://www.simantics.org/redmine/news/<news number>
for the release news.

Best regards,
Simantics Release Engineering Team

Redmine news template:

Title: Simantics x.y.z[.w] released

Simantics x.y.z[.w] was released on <date>.
Please find change log at: [[simantics-platform:Simantics_xyzw|Simantics x.y.z[.w]]]

Insert some general thoughts on the release...

TODO