warewulf/RELEASE.md

Release procedure

Major versions (e.g., v4.5.0) are tagged directly on the main branch. Minor versions (e.g., v4.5.3) are tagged on a separate release branch.

1. Update CHANGELOG.md.

   • Identify the release date by changing "unreleased" to a date with %Y-%m-%d format, following existing convention in the log.

   • Do any final clean-up. (e.g., remove redundancy, add issue or PR numbers, add missing changes)

     git log --graph --oneline --decorate origin/main origin/v4.5.x
     

2. Update userdocs references that imply the latest release to refer to the new version.

   • contents/installation.rst
   • contributing/development-environment-vagrant.rst
   • quickstart/debian12.rst
   • quickstart/el.rst

3. Cherry-pick updates from 1 and 2 above to a release branch if necessary. (i.e., when not doing a new major release)

   git cherry-pick -x -m1 --signoff
   

4. Create a signed tag for the release of the format v4.MINOR.PATCH, following the format specified in <MAINTAINING.md>.

   git tag --sign v4.5.3; git push origin v4.5.3
   

5. Monitor the release action associated with the pushed tag at https://github.com/warewulf/warewulf/actions, and verify the generated draft release contains the expected artifacts. This includes the source tarball and RPMs for Suse and Rocky Linux.

6. Update the release notes for the release, summarizing and expanding on the relevant contents from <CHANGELOG.md>.

7. Confirm the correct values for the pre-release and latest release flags.

8. Publish the release.

9. Announce the release as a post to warewulf.org/news, linking to the GitHub release.

10. Announce the release on the Warewulf Slack, linking to the warewulf.org/news post.