Checklists for PuTTY administrative procedures ============================================== Going into pre-release stabilisation ------------------------------------ When we begin to work towards a release and want to enable pre-releases on the website: - Make a branch whose tip will be the current state of the pre-release. Regardless of whether the branch is from master or from a prior release branch, the name of the branch must now be in the form 'pre-X.YZ', or else the website will fail to link to it properly in gitweb and the build script will check out the wrong thing. - Edit ~/adm/puttysnap.sh on my build machine to set $prerelver correctly. - Edit ~/adm/puttysnap.sh on the master machine to enable pre-release builds, by changing the 'if false' to 'if true'. - Put the website into pre-release mode, by defining prerel_version() in components/Base.mc to return the upcoming version number. Also add a news announcement in components/news. (Previous naming convention has been to name it in the form 'X.YZ-pre.mi'.) Things to do during the branch-stabilisation period: - Go through the source (including the documentation), and the website, and review anything tagged with a comment containing the word XXX-REVIEW-BEFORE-RELEASE. (Any such comments should state clearly what needs to be done.) - Do some testing of the Windows version with Minefield (you can build a Minefield version using 'bob . XFLAGS=-DMINEFIELD'), and of the Unix version with valgrind and/or Address Sanitiser. In particular, any headline features for the release should get a workout with memory checking enabled! Making a release candidate build -------------------------------- - Make a directory to hold all the release paraphernalia. I usually call it ~/src/putty/X.YZ (where X.YZ will stand throughout for the version number). - Inside that directory, clone the PuTTY git repository to a subdirectory ~/src/putty/X.YZ/putty. Here you can make release- related commits and tags tentatively, and keep them out of the way of any 'git push' you might still be doing in other checkouts. - Double-check that we have removed anything tagged with a comment containing the words XXX-REMOVE-BEFORE-RELEASE or XXX-REVIEW-BEFORE-RELEASE. ('git grep XXX-RE' should only show up hits in this file itself.) - Now update the version numbers and the transcripts in the docs, by checking out the release branch in the release-specific checkout and running ./release.pl --version=X.YZ --setver Then check that the resulting automated git commit has updated the version number in the following places: * putty/LATEST.VER * putty/doc/plink.but * putty/doc/pscp.but and also check that it has reset the definition of 'Epoch' in Buildscr. - Make the release tag, pointing at the version-update commit we just generated. - If the release is on a branch (which I expect it generally will be), merge that branch to master. - Make a release-candidate build from the release tag, and put the build.out and build.log files somewhere safe. Normally I store these inside the ~/src/putty/X.YZ directory, alongside the git checkout at ~/src/putty/X.YZ/putty, so I'll sit in that checkout directory and run a command like bob -o ../build-X.YZ-rcN.out -l ../build-X.YZ-rcN.log -c X.YZ . RELEASE=X.YZ This should generate a basically valid release directory as `build-X.YZ-rcN.out/putty', and provide link maps and sign.sh alongside that. - Double-check in build-X.YZ-rcN.log that the release was built from the right git commit. - Make a preliminary gpg signature, but don't run the full release- signing procedure. (We use the presence of a full set of GPG signatures to distinguish _abandoned_ release candidates from the one that ended up being the release.) In the 'build.X.YZ-rcN.out' directory, run sh sign.sh -r -p putty which will generate a clearsigned file called sha512sums-preliminary.gpg _outside_ the 'putty' subdirectory. - For my own safety, make the release candidate build read-only. chmod -R a-w build-X.YZ-rcN.{out,log} - Now do some checking of the release binaries, and pass them to the rest of the team to do some as well. Do at least these things: * make sure they basically work * check they report the right version number * if there's any easily observable behaviour difference between the release branch and master, arrange to observe it * test that the Windows installer installs successfully + on x86 and Arm, and test that putty.exe runs in both cases * test that the Unix source tarball unpacks and builds + on at least a reasonably current stable Linux distro, and also try Debian sid + test-build with all of GTK 1, 2 and 3 + test-build with -DNOT_X_WINDOWS * feed the release-candidate source to Coverity and make sure it didn't turn up any last-minute problems * make sure we have a clean run of sctest * do some testing on a system with a completely clean slate (no prior saved session data) Preparing to make the release ----------------------------- - Write a release announcement (basically a summary of the changes since the last release). Check the draft version into the putty-aux repository, so the whole team can help wordsmith it if they want to. - Update the website, in a local checkout: * Write a release file in components/releases which identifies the new version, a section for the Changes page, and a news announcement for the front page. + The one thing this can't yet contain is the release date; that has to be put in at the last minute, when the release goes live. Fill in 'FIXME', for the moment. * Disable the pre-release sections of the website (if previously enabled), by editing prerel_version() in components/Base.mc to return undef. - Update the wishlist, in a local checkout: * If there are any last-minute wishlist entries (e.g. security vulnerabilities fixed in the new release), write entries for them. * If any other bug fixes have been cherry-picked to the release branch (so that the wishlist mechanism can't automatically mark them as fixed in the new release), add appropriate Fixed-in headers for those. - Sign the release in full. In the `build-X.YZ-rcN.out' directory, re-verify that the preliminary signed checksums file has a correct signature on it and also matches the files you're about to sign for real: gpg -d sha512sums-preliminary.gpg | (cd putty; grep -vF ' (installer version)' | grep . | sha512sum -c) If the combined output of that pipeline reports both a good signature (from the release key) and a successful verification of all the sha512sums, then all is well and you can do the full signing (not forgetting that the directory will have been readonly during the last-minute testing period): chmod -R u+w putty sh sign.sh -r putty # and enter the release key passphrase chmod -R a-w putty The actual release procedure ---------------------------- Once all the above preparation is done and the release has been built locally, this is the procedure for putting it up on the web. - Make a final adjustment to your local website changes, filling in the release date in components/releases/X.YZ.mi. - Upload the release itself and its link maps to everywhere it needs to be, by running this in the build-X.YZ-rcN.out directory: ../putty/release.pl --version=X.YZ --upload - Check that downloads via version-numbered URLs all work: ../putty/release.pl --version=X.YZ --precheck If this has trouble accessing chiark's ftp server, that is unfortunately normal; add --no-ftp and try again. - Switch the 'latest' links over to the new release: * Update the HTTP redirect at the:www/putty/htaccess . * Update the FTP symlink at chiark:ftp/putty-latest . - Now verify that downloads via the 'latest' URLs are all redirected correctly and work: ../putty/release.pl --version=X.YZ --postcheck - Push all the git repositories: * run 'git push' in the website checkout * run 'git push' in the wishlist checkout * push from the main PuTTY checkout. Typically this one will be pushing both the release tag and an update to the master branch, plus removing the pre-release branch, so you'll want some commands along these lines: git push origin master # update the master branch git push origin --tags # should push the new release tag git push origin :pre-X.YZ # delete the pre-release branch - Run ~/adm/puttyweb.sh on thyestes to update the website after all those git pushes. - Check that the unpublished website on thyestes looks sensible. - Run webupdate, so that all the changes on thyestes propagate to chiark. Important to do this _before_ announcing that the release is available. - After running webupdate, run update-rsync on chiark and verify that the rsync mirror package (~/ftp/putty-website-mirror) contains a subdirectory for the new version and that the links from its latest.html point into that subdirectory. - Announce the release! + Construct a release announcement email whose message body is the announcement written above, and which includes the following headers: * Reply-To: * Subject: PuTTY X.YZ is released + Mail that release announcement to . + Post it to comp.security.ssh. + Mention it in on mono. - Edit the master ~/adm/puttysnap.sh to disable pre-release builds, if they were previously enabled. - Relax (slightly).