PEP: 101 Title: Doing Python Releases 101 Version: $Revision$ Last-Modified: $Date$ Author: barry@python.org (Barry Warsaw), guido@python.org (Guido van Rossum) Status: Active Type: Informational Created: 22-Aug-2001 Post-History: Abstract Making a Python release is a thrilling and crazy process. You've heard the expression "herding cats"? Imagine trying to also saddle those purring little creatures up, and ride them into town, with some of their buddies firmly attached to your bare back, anchored by newly sharpened claws. At least they're cute, you remind yourself. Actually, no that's a slight exaggeration . The Python release process has steadily improved over the years and now, with the help of our amazing community, is really not too difficult. This PEP attempts to collect, in one place, all the steps needed to make a Python release. It is organized as a recipe and you can actually print this out and check items off as you complete them. How to Make A Release Here are the steps taken to make a Python release. Some steps are more fuzzy than others because there's little that can be automated (e.g. writing the NEWS entries). Where a step is usually performed by An Expert, the role of that expert is given. Otherwise, assume the step is done by the Release Manager (RM), the designated person performing the release. The roles and their current experts are: * RM = Release Manager: Benjamin Peterson (US/Central) * WE = Windows: Martin von Loewis (Central Europe) * ME = Mac: Ronald Oussoren (Central Europe) * DE = Docs: Georg Brandl (Central Europe) * IE = Idle Expert: ?? NOTE: It is highly recommended that the RM contact the Experts the day before the release. Because the world is round and everyone lives in different timezones, the RM must ensure that the release tag is created in enough time for the Experts to cut binary releases. IT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THAT YOU AT LEAST TAG THE TREE 24 HOURS BEFORE A FINAL RELEASE. This will give the Experts enough time to do their bits before the announcement goes out. In any case, the RM MUST wait for the "green light" from the following experts before updating the web pages and sending the announcement: WE, DE XXX: We should include a dependency graph to illustrate the steps that can be taken in parallel, or those that depend on other steps. As much as possible, the release steps are automated and guided by the release script, which is available in the Python sandbox. The release script is currently being maintained here: http://svn.python.org/view/sandbox/trunk/release/ We use the following conventions in the examples below. Where a release number is given, it is of the form X.YaZ, e.g. 2.6a3 for Python 2.6 alpha 3, where "a" == alpha, "b" == beta, "rc" == release candidate. Final releases are named "releaseXY". The branch tag is "releaseXY-maint" because this will point to the long lived maintenance branch. The fork tag on the trunk is "releaseXY-fork". If a micro release number is used, then we'll say X.Y.MaZ. This helps by performing several automatic editing steps, and guides you to perform some manual editing steps. ___ Log into irc.freenode.net and join the #python-dev channel. You probably need to coordinate with other people around the world. This IRC channel is where we've arranged to meet. ___ Impose a check-in freeze by sending email to python-committers@python.org At this point, nobody except the RM or his duly assigned agents should make any commits to the branches. The assigned agents are either from the list above or by coordination as necessary. If a checkin needs to be made, make sure to state in the checkin comment that the change was approved. If the RM screwed up and some desperate last minute change to the branch is necessary, it can mean extra work for others. So try to avoid this! The RM has full authority to revert any unapproved commits. ___ Check to see if there are any showstopper bugs. Go to http://bugs.python.org and look for any open bugs that can block this release. You're looking at the Priority of the open bugs for the release you're making; here are the relevant definitions: release blocker - Stops the release dead in its tracks. You may not make any release with any open release blocker bugs. deferred blocker - Doesn't block this release, but it will block a future release. You may not make a final or candidate release with any open deferred blocker bugs. critical - Important bugs that should be fixed, but which does not block a release. Review the release blockers and either resolve them, bump them down to deferred, or stop the release and ask for community assistance. If you're making a final or candidate release, do the same with any open deferred. ___ Check the stable buildbots. Go to http://www.python.org/dev/buildbot/stable/ (the trailing slash is required). Look at the buildbots for the release you're making. Ignore any that are offline (or inform the community so they can be restarted). If what remains are (mostly) green buildbots, you're good to go. If you have non-offline red buildbots, you may want to hold up the release until they are fixed. Review the problems and use your judgement, taking into account whether you are making an alpha, beta, or final release. ___ Regenerate Lib/pydoc-topics.py cd to the Doc directory and type ``make pydoc-topics``. Then copy ``build/pydoc-topics/pydoc-topics.py`` to ``../Lib/pydoc_topics.py``. ___ Check the docs for markup errors In the Doc directory, type ``make suspicious``. If any markup errors are found, fix them. ___ Bump version numbers via the release script. .../sandbox/release/release.py --bump X.YaZ This automates updating various release numbers, but you will have to modify a few files manually. If your $EDITOR environment variable is set up correctly, release.py will pop up editor windows with the files you need to edit. It is important to update the Misc/NEWS file, however in recent years, this has become easier as the community is responsible for most of the content of this file. You should only need to review the text for sanity, and update the release date with today's date. ___ Check the years on the copyright notice. If the last release was some time last year, add the current year to the copyright notice in several places: ___ README ___ LICENSE (make sure to change on trunk and the branch) ___ Python/getcopyright.c ___ Doc/README.txt (at the end) ___ Doc/copyright.rst ___ Doc/license.rst ___ PC/python_nt.rc sets up the DLL version resource for Windows (displayed when you right-click on the DLL and select Properties). ___ The license.ht file for the distribution on the website contains what purports to be an HTML-ized copy of the LICENSE file from the distribution. You'll need to bump the version number to the one you're releasing. BROKEN ___ Check with the IE (if there is one ) to be sure that Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt has been similarly updated. ___ For a final release, edit the first paragraph of Doc/whatsnew/X.Y.rst to include the actual release date; e.g. "Python 2.5 was released on August 1, 2003." There's no need to edit this for alpha or beta releases. Note that Andrew Kuchling often takes care of this. ___ If this is a final major release, branch the tree for X.Y When making a major release (e.g., for 2.6), you must create the long-lived maintenance branch. To create a _branch_ (e.g., release26-maint), do the following: .../sandbox/release/release.py --branch X.Y ___ If you just made the release branch, check out a clean version into a new directory. You'll be doing the release from this new branch. % svn co \ svn+ssh://pythondev@svn.python.org/python/branches/release26-maint ___ Set the original trunk up to be the next release. % .../sandbox/release/release.py --bump 2.7a0 ___ Edit all version references in the README ___ Move any historical "what's new" entries from Misc/NEWS to Misc/HISTORY. ___ The LICENSE file. Add the pending version to the list of releases, and be sure to check the release dates. ___ There's a copy of the license in Doc/license.rst ___ Doc/tutorial/interpreter.rst (2 references to '[Pp]ython26', one to 'Python 2.6'). ___ Doc/tutorial/stdlib.rst and Doc/tutorial/stdlib2.rst, which have each one reference to '[Pp]ython26'. ___ Update the version number in configure.in and re-run autoconf. ___ Update the version numbers for the Windows builds in PC/ and PCbuild/, which have references to python26. % find PC/ PCbuild/ \( -type f -and -not -wholename '*/.svn/*' \) | xargs sed -i 's/python26/python27/g' % svn mv PC/os2emx/python26.def PC/os2emx/python27.def ___ cd release26-maint # cd into the branch directory. ___ Tag the release for X.YaZ .../sandbox/release/release.py --tag X.YaZ ___ STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP At this point you must receive the "green light" from other experts in order to create the release. There are things you can do while you wait though, so keep reading until you hit the next STOP. ___ Forward the commit message that created the tag to python-committers and ask that the experts build the binaries. ___ XXX The WE builds the Windows helpfile, using (in Doc/) either $ make htmlhelp (on Unix) or > make.bat htmlhelp (on Windows) to create suitable input for HTML Help Workshop in build/htmlhelp. HTML Help Workshop is then fired up on the created python26.hhp file, finally resulting in an python26.chm file. He then copies the file into the Doc directories of the build trees (once for each target architecture). XXX The CHM file should also be scp'd to the docs download location. ___ XXX The WE then generates Windows installer files for each Windows target architecture (for Python 2.6, this means x86 and AMD64). He has one checkout tree per target architecture, and builds the pcbuild.sln project for the appropriate architecture. He then edits Tools/msi/config.py to update full_current_version, sets snapshot to False and runs msi.py with ActivePython 2.5 or Python 2.5 with pywin32. For that to work, the following prerequisites must be met: - PC\icons.mak must have been run with nmake. - The cmd.exe window in which this is run must have Cygwin/bin in its path (atleast for x86). - The cmd.exe window must have MS compiler tools for the target architecture in its path (VS 2003 for x86, the platform SDK for AMD64). - The cmd.exe window must also have cabarc.exe from the CAB SDK in its path. The WE checksums the files (*.msi and *.chm), uploads them to some place in the net, and emails you the location and md5sums. ___ Time to build the source tarball. If you created a branch, be sure to cd to your working directory for the branch. E.g. % cd .../python26 ___ Do a "svn update ; svn status" in this directory. You should not see any files. I.e. you better not have any uncommitted changes in your working directory, but you may pick up some of the expert's last minute changes. ___ If you've seen updates to existing files and you want these to make it into the release, update the branches. ___ Delete the old tag branch and re-tag the tree ___ Delete the maintenance branch and re-branch the trunk. This should be rare and indicates a breakdown in the process. ___ Use the release script to create the source gzip and bz2 tarballs, md5 checksums, documentation tar and zip files, and gpg signature files. .../sandbox/release/release.py --export X.YaZ This will leave all the relevant files in a subdirectory called 'dist', and the built docs in 'dist/docs'. ___ scp or rsync all the files to your home directory on dinsdale.python.org. While you're waiting for the files to finish uploading, you can continue on with the remaining tasks. You can also ask folks on #python-dev and/or python-committers to download the files as they finish uploading so that they can test them on their platforms as well. ___ Now you want to perform the very important step of checking the tarball you just created, to make sure a completely clean, virgin build passes the regression test. Here are the best steps to take: % cd /tmp % tar xzvf ~/Python-2.6c2.tgz # tar xjvf ~/Python-2.6c2.tar.bz2 % cd Python-2.6c2 % ls (Do things look reasonable?) % ls Lib (Are there stray .pyc files?) % ls Doc/tools (Make sure it doesn't contain "docutils", "sphinx", "jinja" or "pygments" directories. Also look for stray .pyc files.) % ./configure (Loads of configure output) % make test (Do all the expected tests pass?) If you're feeling lucky and have some time to kill, or if you are making a release candidate or final release, run the full test suite: % make TESTOPTS='-u all' test If the tests pass, then you can feel good that the tarball is fine. If some of the tests fail, or anything else about the freshly unpacked directory looks weird, you better stop now and figure out what the problem is. ___ Now you need to go to dinsdale.python.org and move all the files in place over there. Our policy is that every Python version gets its own directory, but each directory may contain several releases. We keep all old releases, moving them into a "prev" subdirectory when we have a new release. So, there's a directory called "2.6" which contains Python-2.6a2.exe and Python-2.6a2.tgz, along with a "prev" subdirectory containing Python-2.6a1.msi, Python-2.6a1.tgz, Python-2.6a1.tar.bz2, etc. ___ On dinsdale, cd /data/ftp.python.org/pub/python/X.Y[.Z] creating it if necessary. ___ Move the previous release files to a directory called 'prev' creating the directory if necessary (make sure the directory has g+ws bits on). If this is the first alpha release of a new Python version, skip this step. For pre-releases (alpha, beta, rc), don't move things into a 'prev' directory, You'll move everything in there when the final release comes out. ___ Move the release .tgz, tar.bz2, and .msi files into place, as well as the .asc GPG signature files. Make sure they are world readable. They should also be group writable, and group-owned by webmaster. ___ md5sum the files and make sure they got uploaded intact. ___ If this is a final release: Move the doc zips and tarballs to /data/ftp.python.org/pub/python/doc/X.Y[.Z] creating the directory if necessary, and adapt the "current" symlink in .../doc to point to that directory. Note though that if you're releasing a maintenance release for an older version, don't change the current link. ___ If this is a final release (even a maintenance release), also unpack the HTML docs to /data/ftp.python.org/pub/docs.python.org/release/X.Y[.Z]. ___ Let the DE check if the docs are built and work all right. ___ If this is a major release: Tell the DE to adapt redirects for docs.python.org/X.Y in the Apache config for docs.python.org, update the script Doc/tools/dailybuild.py to point to the right stable/development branches, and to install it and make the initial checkout. ___ For the extra paranoid, do a completely clean test of the release. This includes downloading the tarball from www.python.org. Make sure the md5 checksums match. Then unpack the tarball, and do a clean make test. % make distclean % ./configure % make test To ensure that the regression test suite passes. If not, you screwed up somewhere! Now it's time to twiddle the web site. To do these steps, you must have the permission to edit the website. If you don't have that, ask someone on pydotorg@python.org for the proper permissions. It's insane for you not to have it. I'm not going to go into the details of building the site or pushing it live. Plenty of people on pydotorg can help you, and there's a good README once you get the branch. All the directories below are named relative to the data subdirectory unless otherwise noted. This page will probably come in handy: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickref.html None of the web site updates are automated by release.py. ___ Build the basic site. In the top directory, do an `svn update` to get the latest code. In the build subdirectory, do `make` to build the site. Do `make serve` to start service the pages on localhost:8005. Hit that url to see the site as it is right now. At any time you can re-run `make` to update the local site. You don't have to restart the server. Don't `svn commit` until you're all done! ___ If this is the first release for this version (even a new patch version), you'll need to create a subdirectory inside download/releases to hold the new version files. It's probably a good idea to copy an existing recent directory and twiddle the files in there for the new version number. ___ Add a news section item to the front page by editing newsindex.yml. The format should be pretty self evident. ___ If this is a final release... ___ update the 'Quick Links' section on the front page. Edit the top-level `content.ht` file. ___ update the download page, editing `download/content.ht` ___ edit the previous release's last release content.ht page to point to the new release. ___ update `doc/content.ht` to indicate the new current documentation version, and remove the current version from any 'in development' section. Update the version in the "What's New" link. ___ Add the new version to `doc/versions/content.ht`. ___ Edit download/releases/content.ht to update the version numbers for this release. There are a bunch of places you need to touch: ___ The subdirectory name as the first element in the Nav rows. ___ Possibly the Releases section, and possibly in the experimental releases section if this is an alpha, beta or release candidate. ___ Update the version specific pages. ___ cd to download/releases/X.Y.Z ___ Edit the version numbers in content.ht ___ Comment out the link to the CHM file if this is not a final, remove the comment if it is. ___ Update the md5 checksums Note, you don't have to copy the actual .tgz or tar.bz2 tarballs into this directory because they only live on dinsdale in the ftp directory. ___ When everything looks good, `svn commit` in the data directory. This will trigger the live site to update itself, and at that point the release is live. ___ If this is a final release, create a new python.org/X.Y Apache alias (or ask pydotorg to do so for you). Now it's time to write the announcement for the mailing lists. This is the fuzzy bit because not much can be automated. You can use an earlier announcement as a template, but edit it for content! ___ STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP ___ Have you gotten the green light from the WE? ___ Have you gotten the green light from the DE? ___ Once the announcement is ready, send it to the following addresses: python-list@python.org python-announce@python.org python-dev@python.org Now it's time to do some cleaning up. These steps are very important! ___ If you made a non-maintenance branch, be sure to merge it into the trunk! Now that we've released this branch, we don't need it any more. We've already tagged it so we can always reproduce it. Note that merging branches is a bit of a black art, but here's what's worked for us. NOTE: If this was an X.Y major release, we will be using this as the maintenance branch for a long time to come. ___ Check out a completely clean, virgin working directory of the trunk, by doing this in the directory that is the parent of your branch working directory python-XYaZ: % svn co \ svn+ssh://pythondev@svn.python.org/python/trunk python-clean ___ Run a diff against your branch by doing this in the common parent directory containing both python-clean and python-XYaZ: % diff -r python-clean python-26a2 | grep ^diff | grep -v /.svn/ \ > /tmp/diffcmd.sh ___ Edit diffcmd.sh to get rid of files that you know don't have important changes. You're looking for files that have updates in the branch that haven't made it to the trunk. Generally you can ignore any changes to the Doc or Mac subdirectories, or any changes to Windows related files. The sub-RMs for those parts will take care of any necessary merges from the branch to the trunk. If you've been diligent about merging changes from the trunk into the branch, there shouldn't be many of these files. ___ Edit /tmp/diffcmd.sh, changing all the -r's into -u's. Run the /tmp/diffcmd.sh command like so: % sh /tmp/diffcmd.sh > /tmp/pydiff.txt ___ Attempt to patch your python-clean working directory. Do this first, noting that --dry-run does not actually apply any patches, it just makes sure that the patch command runs successfully to completion: % patch -p1 --dry-run < /tmp/pydiff.txt ___ If this goes well, run it again, taking out the --dry-run option. If this fails, or if it prompts you for a file to patch, try using -p0 instead of -p1. Otherwise, your diff command was messed up, so try again. ___ cd to python-clean and do a "svn commit". Use as your log message something like "Merging the rXYaZ-maint tag back into the trunk". ___ Do the guided post-release steps with the release script. .../sandbox/release/release.py --done X.YaZ Review and commit these changes. ___ Send email to python-committers informing them that the branch has been unfrozen. ___ Update any release PEPs (e.g. 361) with the release dates. ___ Update the tracker at http://bugs.python.org: ___ Flip all the deferred blocker issues back to release blocker for the next release. ___ Add version X.Y+1 as when version X.Y enters alpha. ___ Change non-doc RFEs to version X.Y+1 when version X.Y enters beta. ___ Update 'behavior' issues from versions that your release make unsupported to the next supported version. ___ Review open issues, as this might find lurking showstopper bugs, besides reminding people to fix the easy ones they forgot about. What Next? ___ Verify! Pretend you're a user: download the files from python.org, and make Python from it. This step is too easy to overlook, and on several occasions we've had useless release files. Once a general server problem caused mysterious corruption of all files; once the source tarball got built incorrectly; more than once the file upload process on SF truncated files; and so on. ___ Rejoice. Drink. Be Merry. Write a PEP like this one. Or be like unto Guido and take A Vacation. You've just made a Python release! Windows Notes Windows has a MSI installer, various flavors of Windows have "special limitations", and the Windows installer also packs precompiled "foreign" binaries (Tcl/Tk, expat, etc). So Windows testing is tiresome but very necessary. Concurrent with uploading the installer, the WE installs Python from it twice: once into the default directory suggested by the installer, and later into a directory with embedded spaces in its name. For each installation, he runs the full regression suite from a DOS box, and both with and without -0. For maintenance release, he also tests whether upgrade installations succeed. He also tries *every* shortcut created under Start -> Menu -> the Python group. When trying IDLE this way, you need to verify that Help -> Python Documentation works. When trying pydoc this way (the "Module Docs" Start menu entry), make sure the "Start Browser" button works, and make sure you can search for a random module (like "random" ) and then that the "go to selected" button works. It's amazing how much can go wrong here -- and even more amazing how often last-second checkins break one of these things. If you're "the Windows geek", keep in mind that you're likely the only person routinely testing on Windows, and that Windows is simply a mess. Repeat the testing for each target architecture. On XP/2003, try both an Admin and a plain User (not Power User) account. If you can, also test the installer on Windows 9x. WRT Step 5 above (verify the release media), since by the time release files are ready to download the WE has generally run many Windows tests on the installer he uploaded, he usually doesn't do anything for Step 5 except a full byte-comparison ("fc /b" if using a Windows shell) of the downloaded file against the file he uploaded. Copyright This document has been placed in the public domain. Local Variables: mode: indented-text indent-tabs-mode: nil End: