Release Procedure

Release Procedure

Revised : 26 August 2024

This describes the procedure to follow to create a release in terms of a number of phases.

Pre-Release Phase

This phase focuses on preparing the code base for release.

1. Update the pom.xml files and remove the pre prefix from the project version.
2. Update the expected release date and the year in all html and md files.
3. Copy the contents from whatsnew.html to version_history.html and CHANGELOG.md for the new release.
4. Commit the changes.

The location of the aforementioned html and md files are at :

• mars-sim/CHANGELOG.md
• mars-sim/mars-sim-ui/../src/main/resources/docs/help/version_history.html
• mars-sim/mars-sim-ui/../src/main/resources/docs/help/whatsnew.html

Release Phase

This involves creating the release in GitHub and ensuring the code base is properly tagged.

1. In the local repo create a tag for the new release. Note the tag MUST begin with 'v'

git tag vX.Y.Z

2. Then push the tag to the remote repo

git push --tags

3. This will trigger a dedicated GitHub Action Create Release which will build the complete code and then create a release.
4. Go to the Releases page and there will be a new release matching the tag name. Check the release including artifacts and update the notes if required.
5. Once satisfied, publish the release so that it becomes an official public release.

Post-Release Phase

If the previous release was not a bug fix then the numbering needs advancing.

The post release phase is about preparing the code base for a next new phase of development for a next release version, namely, X.Y.Z.

Initially this next version should be called pre-X.Y.Z.

e.g. if 3.5.0 has just been published, assign the next version as pre-3.6.0.

The detailed steps are as follows :

1. Update the pom.xml files to reference the new project version, pre-X.Y.Z.
2. Update the whatsnew.html file to the next version by replacing with pre-X.Y.Z and a new date.
3. Commit the changes to the code base.