etcd release guide

The guide talks about how to release a new version of etcd.

The procedure includes some manual steps for sanity checking but it can probably be further scripted. Please keep this document up-to-date if you want to make changes to the release process.

Prepare Release

Set desired version as environment variable for following steps. Here is an example to release 2.1.3:

export VERSION=v2.1.3
export PREV_VERSION=v2.1.2

All releases version numbers follow the format of semantic versioning 2.0.0.

Major, Minor Version Release, or its Pre-release

• Ensure the relevant milestone on GitHub is complete. All referenced issues should be closed, or moved elsewhere.
• Remove this release from roadmap, if necessary.
• Ensure the latest upgrade documentation is available.
• Bump hardcoded MinClusterVerion in the repository, if necessary.
• Add feature capability maps for the new version, if necessary.

Patch Version Release

• Discuss about commits that are backported to the patch release. The commits should not include merge commits.
• Cherry-pick these commits starting from the oldest one into stable branch.

Write Release Note

• Write introduction for the new release. For example, what major bug we fix, what new features we introduce or what performance improvement we make.
• Write changelog for the last release. ChangeLog should be straightforward and easy to understand for the end-user.
• Put [GH XXXX] at the head of change line to reference Pull Request that introduces the change. Moreover, add a link on it to jump to the Pull Request.

Tag Version

• Bump hardcoded Version in the repository to the latest version ${VERSION}.
• Ensure all tests on CI system are passed.
• Manually check etcd is buildable in Linux, Darwin and Windows.
• Manually check upgrade etcd cluster of previous minor version works well.
• Manually check new features work well.
• Add a signed tag through git tag -s ${VERSION}.
• Sanity check tag correctness through git show tags/$VERSION.
• Push the tag to GitHub through git push origin tags/$VERSION. This assumes origin corresponds to “https://github.com/etcd-io/etcd".

Build Release Binaries and Images

• Ensure docker is available.

Run release script in root directory:

./scripts/release.sh ${VERSION}

It generates all release binaries and images under directory ./release.

Sign Binaries and Images

Choose appropriate private key to sign the generated binaries and images.

The following commands are used for public release sign:

cd release
# personal GPG is okay for now
for i in etcd-*{.zip,.tar.gz}; do gpg --sign ${i}; done

Publish Release Page in GitHub

• Set release title as the version name.
• Follow the format of previous release pages.
• Attach the generated binaries, aci image and signatures.
• Select whether it is a pre-release.
• Publish the release!

Publish Docker Image in Quay.io

• Push docker image:

docker login quay.io
docker push quay.io/coreos/etcd:${VERSION}
docker push quay.io/coreos/etcd:${VERSION}-${arch}

• Add latest tag to the new image on quay.io if this is a stable release.

Announce to etcd-dev Googlegroup

• Follow the format of previous release emails.
• Make sure to include a list of authors that contributed since the previous release - something like the following might be handy:

git log ...${PREV_VERSION} --pretty=format:"%an" | sort | uniq | tr '\n' ',' | sed -e 's#,#, #g' -e 's#, $##'

• Send email to etcd-dev@googlegroups.com

Post Release

• Create new stable branch through git push origin ${VERSION_MAJOR}.${VERSION_MINOR} if this is a major stable release. This assumes origin corresponds to “https://github.com/etcd-io/etcd".
• Bump hardcoded Version in the repository to the version ${VERSION}+git.