PEP: 101 Title: Doing Python Releases 101 Version: $Revision$ Last-Modified: $Date$ Author: barry@python.org (Barry A. 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: Barry Warsaw * WE = Windows: Martin von Loewis * ME = Mac: Ronald Oussoren 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 by the RM: 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, "c" == 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 a release with any open blocker bugs. deferred blocker - Doesn't block this release, but it will block a future release. critical - Important bugs that should be fixed before the next release, but which won't block a non-final release. You can make alpha and beta releases with open critical bugs, but you may not make a final release with open critical bugs. 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 release, do the same with any open deferred and crticial bugs. ___ 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 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. ___ 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. Most importantly is 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. If the minor (middle) digit of the version number changes, you will be prompted to update some additional files: ___ 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 (3 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'. ___ 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. BROKEN ___ For major releases (e.g. 2.6 final), move any historical "what's new" entries from Misc/NEWS to Misc/HISTORY. ___ Check with the IDLE maintainer to be sure that Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt has been similarly updated. (XXX Who is the IE (i.e. Idle Expert)? ___ 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. ___ Tag and/or branch the tree for release X.YaZ If you're releasing an alpha/beta/release candidate, you will just tag the tree. If you are releasing a final release, you will both tag the trunk and create the long-lived maintenance branch. .../sandbox/release/release.py --tag X.YaZ Practically speaking, we tag and branch just before making the release. Branching too early causes too much merging work. When making a major release (e.g., for 2.6), you should branch. To create a _branch_ (e.g., release26-maint), do the following: .../sandbox/release/release.py --branch X.Y.Z ___ If you just made the release branch, check out a clean version into a new directory. You'll be doing a lot of work in this directory and you want to keep it straight from your trunk working directory. E.g. % svn co \ svn+ssh://pythondev@svn.python.org/python/branches/release26-maint ___ cd release26-maint # cd into the branch directory. ___ XXX If this is a release candidate, mail Sean noting the impending release, so that RPMs can be built and tested. ___ 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 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. ___ XXX Sean Reifschneider grabs the HTML and uses this to build the Linux RPMs. Sean performs his Red Hat magic, generating a set of RPMs. He uploads these files to python.org. He then sends the RM a notice which includes the location and MD5 checksum of the RPMs. ___ 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 .../python-26 ___ 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, update the svn tag: .../sandbox/release/release.py --tag X.YaZ ___ Use the release script to create the gzip and bz2 tarballs, md5 checksums, and gpg signature files. .../sandbox/release/release.py --export X.YaZ This will leave all the relevant files in a subdirectory called 'dist'. ___ 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 zxvf ~/Python-2.6c2.tgz # tar xjvf ~/Python-2.6c2.tar.bz2 % cd Python-2.6c2 % ls (Do things look reasonable?) % ./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. ___ 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! ___ Upload the tar files to dinsdale.python.org using scp. ___ Now we're waiting for the scp to dinsdale to finish. Da de da, da de dum, hmm, hmm, dum de dum. ___ 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-2.5a2.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 .tgz, tar.bz2, and .msi files to this directory. 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. 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. ___ 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 ___ Copy the new .asc files into place ___ Update the md5 checksums ___ Copy Misc/NEWS to download/releases/X.Y.Z/NEWS.txt ___ Copy Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt to download/releases/X.Y.Z/IDLENEWS.txt 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. 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! ___ Once the announcement is ready, send it to the following addresses: python-list@python.org python-announce@python.org python-dev@python.org ___ XXX Mention the release as the most recent stable one in pydotorg:doc/faq/general.ht (section "How stable is Python?") ___ XXX Make the last change to the documentation area on python.org. (Remember those from the documentation items above? It's time now.) The "current" symlink needs to be updated if this release is the highest-versioned release. Log in to dinsdale.python.org, and update a symlink in the doc/ tree: # on dinsdale: $ cd /data/ftp.python.org/pub/www.python.org/doc/ $ rm current && ln -s $VERSION current 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-dev (Py3: and python-3000) informing them that the branch has been unfrozen. ___ Update the release PEP (e.g. 361) with the release dates. ___ In the tracker at http://bugs.python.org, flip all the deferred blocker issues back to release blocker for the next release. 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! Final Release Notes The Final release of any major release, e.g. Python 2.5 final, has special requirements, specifically because it will be one of the longest lived releases (i.e. betas don't last more than a couple of weeks, but final releases can last for years!). For this reason we want to have a higher coordination between the three major releases: Windows, Mac, and source. So we add this extra step to the release process for a final release: ___ Hold up the final release until the WE and ME approve, or until we lose patience . 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: