hush3/doc/release-process.md

Release Process

Meta: There should always be a single release engineer to disambiguate responsibility.

A. Define the release version as:

$ ZCASH_RELEASE=${UPSTREAM_VERSION}.z${ZCASH_RELEASE_COUNTER}

Example:

$ ZCASH_RELEASE=0.11.2.z2

Also, the following commands use the ZCASH_RELEASE_PREV bash variable for the previous release:

$ ZCASH_RELEASE_PREV=0.11.2.z1

B. create a new release branch / github PR

B1. update (commit) version in sources

doc/README.md
src/clientversion.h
configure.ac

In configure.ac and clientversion.h change CLIENT_VERSION_IS_RELEASE to false while Zcash is in alpha-test phase.

B2. write release notes

git shortlog helps a lot, for example:

$ git shortlog --no-merges v${ZCASH_RELEASE_PREV}..HEAD \
    > ./doc/release-notes/release-notes-${ZCASH_RELEASE}.md

B3. change the network magics

If this release breaks backwards compatibility, change the network magic numbers. Set the four pchMessageStart in CTestNetParams in chainparams.cpp to random values.

B4. merge the previous changes

Do the normal pull-request, review, testing process for this release PR.

C. Verify code artifact hosting

C1. Ensure depends tree is working

http://ci.leastauthority.com:8010/builders/depends-sources

C2. Ensure public parameters work

Run ./fetch-params.sh.

D. make tags / release-branch for the newly merged result

In this example, we ensure zc.v0.11.2.latest is up to date with the previous merged PR, then:

$ git tag v${ZCASH_RELEASE}
$ git branch zc.v${ZCASH_RELEASE}
$ git push origin v${ZCASH_RELEASE}
$ git push origin zc.v${ZCASH_RELEASE}

E. deploy testnet

F. publish the release announcement (blog, zcash-dev, slack)

G. celebrate

missing steps

Zcash still needs:

• deterministic build

• signatured tags

• thorough pre-release testing (presumably more thorough than standard PR tests)

• release deployment steps (eg: updating build-depends mirror, deploying testnet, etc...)

• proper zcash-specific versions and names in software and documentation.