The HEAD
of main
branch is considered the most active development, to which new features and bug fixes are applied. The expectation is that main will always build and pass tests.
Development is incremental. It is expected that pull-requests are either:
- complete and fully integrated into code execution path, or
- have a feature switch which must be enabled until code completion is reached.
HEAD
on main is expected to be in a state that it could be released.
The next major release will be tagged and released from main.
If the current released version is v0.3.1
and the next major release is v0.4.0
, then when it is deemed appropriate v0.4.0
will be tagged off main, followed by a release.
From that tag work will continue on main.
If it is necessary in the future to have a patch release for v0.4.1
, a branch will be created off the v0.4.0
tag with the nomenclature of releases/{major.minor}
, in this example releases/0.4
.
Branches matching releases/*
are protected branches in the repository.
The HEAD
of the release branches follows the same conventions as main. It is expected that HEAD
of the release branch is always in a releasable state. The purpose of the release branch is for bug fixes only. New features should not be targeted to a release branch.
Pull request for documentation (in the kudo.dev
repo) should be prepared and reviewed at
the same time as the pull request for any user-visible (documentation-worthy) change.
The description for the code change PR should link to the documentation PR (and vice-versa).
The documentation PR should be made against the branch dedicated to next release, and merged as soon as its
corresponding PR(s) against the kudo
repo is/are merged.
The name of the release-dedicated branch is post-vx.y.z
where x.y.z
is the previous release.
This gives us the ability to have each branch be used for only a single release without knowing in advance
what the exact version number will be up-front.
Bug fixes are expected to be worked on and applied to main
.
If the fix is needed for a previously supported release version of KUDO, then a backport is expected.
The bug fix pull request is expected to be marked with a backport
label.
If a bug fix has to be backported to a previous version, it is expected when possible that the backport is a git cherry-pick
, updated if necessary to conform to previous code and architecture.
On occasion a cherry-pick is too much of a burden. In this case, fix the bug as a new pull request against the release branch. Provide the same title and details of the original pull request for traceability.
The KUDO Project is aiming to do monthly minor releases but the period could be even shorter if necessary. The process is as follows:
- Every release should have an appointed release manager (RM)
- RM is responsible for following the process below
- RM should announce the release in the public #kudo slack channel at least two days prior to the date
- RM makes sure all PRs that need to go into the release are merged prior to the process starting
- RM prepares a pre-release at least 2 days before the release process is started and makes sure it's manually tested at least in the parts where we lack automatic tests for now (pre-release should be announced in the #kudo slack channel)
The official binaries for KUDO are created using goreleaser. The .goreleaser.yml defines the binaries which are supported for each release. Goreleaser is right now run manually from the RM computer.
- Ensure you have credential
GITHUB_TOKEN
set. The env must includeexport GITHUB_TOKEN=<personal access token>
. Help provided from Github. The token must grant full access to:repo
,write:packages
,read:packages
. - Ensure you are logged into Docker hub and have rights to push to kudobuilder.
-
Tag the kudo repo with expected release
git tag -a v0.2.0 -m "v0.2.0"
and push the taggit push --tags
. -
Invoke goreleaser
goreleaser --rm-dist
. -
Update the GH release with release highlights and supported Kubernetes versions. There is a draft that contains categorized changes since the last release. It provides categories for highlights, breaking changes, and contributors which should be added the gorelease release notes. The changelog from the draft log is ignored. After the contents are copied, the draft can be deleted.
-
Merge the branch of the
kudo.dev
repo dedicated to current release intomain
, following the regular GitHub pull request process. -
Immediately after that, create a
post-v0.2.0
branch for documentation for a future release from the tip ofmain
of thekudo.dev
repo, for example in the GitHub UI: -
Send an announcement email to [email protected] with the subject
[ANNOUNCE] Kudo $VERSION is released
-
Run
./hack/generate_krew.sh
and submit the generatedkudo.yaml
to https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/krew-index/. -
Update KUDO_VERSION in the Makefile of operators repo.
Note: If there are issues with the release, any changes to the repository will result in it being considered "dirty" and not in a state to be released.
It is possible outside of the standard release process to build a "snapshot" release using the following command: goreleaser release --skip-publish --snapshot --rm-dist
This process will create a dist
folder with all the build artifacts. The changelog is not created unless a full release is executed. If you are looking to get a "similar" changelog, install github-release-notes and execute github-release-notes -org kudobuilder -repo kudo -since-latest-release
.
Note: There is value in providing a blog of highlighted features after release against kudobuilder/kudo.dev with a blog post.
Note: The release note for a full release should contain all changes since the last non-pre-release. For example a 0.16.0
changelog should contain all changes since 0.15.3
, not only the changes since 0.16.0-rc2
.
As outlined above, when it is necessary to create a new release branch, it is necessary to update the circle-ci config to test merges against the correct branch. It is necessary replace all references to main
with the appropriate release branch.
When cutting a patch release, for example v0.3.3
, it is necessary to ensure that all bugs fixed on main after v0.3.2
have landed on the release branch, releases/0.3
in this case.
Cutting pre-release is very similar to cutting a stable release. That is because our .goreleaser.yml
contains prerelease: auto
which automatically detects a pre-release if the tag name looks like a pre-release.
For pre-releases, we're not pushing docker images to the official repo. This is intentional because the following setting is set in .goreleaser.yml
- dockers.skip_push: auto
. That is because for pre-release, we don't want to update the latest tag just yet. Even though there is no push, goreleaser still builds the images for you.
This is the full pre-release step by step:
- Ensure you have credential
GITHUB_TOKEN
set. The env must includeexport GITHUB_TOKEN=<personal access token>
. Help provided from Github. The token must grant full access to: repo, write:packages, read:packages. - Ensure you are logged into Docker hub and have rights to push to kudobuilder.
- Tag repo with expected pre-release (the name of the tag has to contain e.g. rc1 or similar)
git tag -a v0.2.0-rc1 -m "v0.2.0-rc1"
&& push taggit push --tags
. - Invoke goreleaser
goreleaser --rm-dist
. - Push only versioned docker image via
docker push kudobuilder/controller:v0.2.0-rc1
Note: The release notes for a pre-release should contain all changes since any previously released version. For example 0.16.0-rc1
should list all changes since 0.15.3
if that was the latest 0.15
release. 0.16.0-rc2
would contain all changes since 0.16.0-rc1
.