Pacemaker Release Checklist

Updated 855 Days AgoPublic

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Policies

• Pacemaker has a main branch, which gets all new development first, and release branches for major-minor series (such as 2.1 and 3.0). Only one or two release branches still receive development; older release branches do not.

• When the highest-versioned major series starts a new release cycle, the main branch is pulled into its release branch for rc1. This means all main-branch development lands in the next rc1 of the highest-versioned major series.

• If a change is desired in the highest-versioned major series during the release cycle (after rc1 is released but before final), or in an older major-version series, a PR backporting it to the desired release branch must be submitted separately.

• During the release cycle, only bug-fix backports should be merged into a release branch. Near the end of the cycle, only regression fixes should be merged.

Testing

All of this should be done on the main branch just before rc1, addressing any issues found. Selected parts can be repeated for later release candidates when appropriate.

• Run all regression tests (including cts-cli -t agents, cts-attrd, cts-fencing, cts-exec, and cts-exec -R; see cts/README.md).
• Run a long CTS lab (see cts/README.md) against a several-node cluster using cts-lab or a wrapper (such as cluster_test or your own).
• Perform static analysis. The devel directory has make targets for convenience (cppcheck, clang, and coverity or coverity-corp).
• Verify OCF agent meta-data is valid (replacing $OCF_RNG_SCHEMA with the path to ra-api.rng from a local checkout of the OCF-spec source repository):
  • make RNG="$OCF_RNG_SCHEMA" -C agents/ocf validate
• Verify formatted output args using fosa.
• Locally generate all documentation that will be uploaded to the website, and proof changes since the last release.
  • To see changes: git diff Pacemaker-$LAST_RELEASE.. -- doc/sphinx
  • Ensure that significant new features are documented in Pacemaker Explained (with "(since <version>)" for new syntax or behavior).
  • For a new major version, remove any "(since <version>)" for older versions no longer supported in a rolling upgrade.
• Perform a rolling upgrade from any supported previous version.
• Test creating, starting, recovering, and stopping a bundle resource.
• Optionally, compare scheduler timings against the previous release to make sure there are no large unexplained regressions. From a checkout, run the first command below for the old and new builds, then run the second command to compare the two. Minimize variation however you can (use same host, don't do anything else while running it, maybe try to seed the disk read cache). There still is a good bit of variation from run to run so it is unclear at this point what is significant.
  • PCMK_schema_directory=xml tools/crm_simulate --profile cts/scheduler/xml --repeat 1000 > ~/crm_simulate.$VERSION.out
  • tools/pcmk_simtimes ~/crm_simulate.*.out -s 0.1 -p 5
• Optionally, check the current buildability in COPR (default sort starts with the newest builds, optionally use pacemaker in the filter box, check at least Git branch field on the details page, optionally also git commit encoded in the R> part of package identifier)

rc1 only

• Pull main branch into release branch
  • If this is a new major or minor release, create the release branch, and ensure CI gets updated to check it.
• Things that don't need to be done every release but are helpful every now and then:
  • cts/cts-scheduler --update (only if the tests already all pass!), to update whitespace usage in expected output (which is ignored by the regression tests, but can help manual comparisons)
  • (Do not do this until we can raise the minimum automake dependency to 1.14) make -C maint gnulib-update to update the code we bundle from gnulib

• Make sure that the feature set has been bumped appropriately for code changes in this release (the minor version if any new features require DC support including most schema changes, and the minor-minor version if any new features at all have been added including command-line tool arguments).

• Make sure that PCMK__API_VERSION in include/crm/common/output_internal.h is equal to the highest version in the source file names in xml/api.

• Update translation files: make -C po update-po

• Update xml/README.md for pacemaker-to-schema version mapping, if needed
  • To see schema changes since last release: git log --no-merges Pacemaker-$LAST_VERSION.. xml

• Run maint/bumplibs to update shared library (libtool) versions for changes since last point release, which will show all library diffs since the last release and ask whether the changes involve compatible public API additions, incompatible public API additions/removals, or fixes. Verify the script's changes (which it displays at the end).
  • Versions can be updated again for later release candidates if they break the public API (which should be avoided unless absolutely necessary) by running the script with Pacemaker-$PREVIOUS_RC_TAG as the argument.
  • For details about library versioning, see Updating library version information.

• Update m4/version.m4 to new release version, without -rc suffix.
  • When bumping the major or minor release number, epub_identifier in doc/sphinx/conf.py.in needs to be updated
  • At some point, it might be worthwhile to include the -rc suffix for better differentiation of release candidates, but that will need a lot of testing to see how it affects RPMS, version comparisons, etc.

All releases

Repeat until final. All work is in the release branch.

• Update the Changelog:
  • release candidates: make -C maint LAST_RELEASE=Pacemaker-$LAST_VERSION changelog and then edit manually to make sense from a user perspective
  • final: merge the rc entries into a single entry, then update summary with the output of make -C maint LAST_RELEASE=Pacemaker-$LAST_FINAL_VERSION NEXT_RELEASE=Pacemaker-$NEW_VERSION summary

• Make a github release:
  • Go to Pacemaker releases on Github and select Draft a new release
  • Choose a tag: Pacemaker-X.Y.Z-rcN or Pacemaker-X.Y.Z
  • Target: release branch
  • Release title: "Pacemaker X.Y.Z - Release Candidate N" or "Pacemaker X.Y.Z - Final"
  • Describe this release: copy relevant part of ChangeLog
  • This is a pre-release: check if this is an rc
  • Can save as draft to preview if desired

• If this release fixed any regressions, update the descriptions on GitHub of the releases that introduced the regressions
• Publicize
  • See for example https://lists.clusterlabs.org/pipermail/users/2019-October/026482.html (to generate a list of contributors, run make -C maint LAST_RELEASE=Pacemaker-$PREVIOUS authors or equivalently, git log Pacemaker-$PREVIOUS..Pacemaker-$RC --format='%an'|sort -u)
  • If this is rc1, announce request policy on developers@clusterlabs.org (features into main, fixes into release branch), e.g. https://lists.clusterlabs.org/pipermail/developers/2019-October/002230.html

• Pull release branch back into main branch and merge.

• If this is an rc, wait for feedback, and address any reported issues. About 1-4 weeks between release candidates is good.

After final release

• export RSYNC_RSH="ssh -p $PORT" appropriately for the ClusterLabs website host.

• git fetch upstream --tags so the make targets can use the new release tag instead of commit ID.

• Run make -C doc www to regenerate most documentation on ClusterLabs.org website (doxygen, indexed source, Clusters From Scratch, Pacemaker Explained, etc.).

• Run make -C doc LAST_RELEASE=Pacemaker-$PREVIOUS_RELEASE TAG=Pacemaker-$NEW_RELEASE abi-www to generate the ABI compatibility report.

• In the ClusterLabs project manager (this site):
  • Update release calendar and Pacemaker feature set.
  • Update all relevant tasks from Merged status to Released (do Advanced Search for Merged status and release tag, then select all and bulk edit)
  • Archive the release milestone(s) (go to milestone and select Manage then Archive)
  • Create the next milestone(s) (which will be the release(s) after next)