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 an arduous process that takes a minimum of half a day's work even for an experienced releaser. Until recently, most -- if not all -- of that burden was borne by Guido himself. But several recent releases have been performed by other folks, so 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 name of that expert is given. Otherwise, assume the step is done by the Release Manager (RM), the designated person performing the release. Almost every place the RM is mentioned below, this step can also be done by the BDFL of course! XXX: We should include a dependency graph to illustrate the steps that can be taken in parallel, or those that depend on other steps. We use the following conventions in the examples below. Where a release number is given, it is of the form X.YaZ, e.g. 2.5a3 for Python 2.5 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. Note: This document has been updated to reflect the more streamlined procedures used to release Python 2.5 (including the alphas and betas). ___ Impose a check-in freeze. Send a message to python-dev@python.org telling people not to make any check-ins on the tree until further notice. At this point, nobody except the RM should make any commits to the branch (or his duly assigned agents, i.e. Guido the BDFL, Fred Drake for documentation, or Martin v. Loewis for Windows). If the RM screwed up and some desperate last minute change to the branch is necessary, it can mean extra work for Fred and Martin. So try to avoid this! ___ 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. ___ The most important thing to do is to update the Misc/NEWS file. Tim will need this in order to do the Windows release and he likes to stay up late. This step can be pretty tedious, so it's best to get to it immediately after making the branch, or even before you've made the branch. Add high level items new to this release. E.g. if we're releasing 2.5a3, there must be a section at the top of the file explaining "What's new in Python 2.5a3". It will be followed by a section entitled "What's new in Python 2.5a2". Note that you /hope/ that as developers add new features to the trunk, they've updated the NEWS file accordingly. You can't be positive, so double check. If you're a Unix weenie, it helps to verify with Tim Peters about changes on Windows, and Jack Jansen about changes on the Mac. This command should help you: % cvs log | python Tools/scripts/logmerge.py > /tmp/news.txt IOW, you're printing out all the cvs log entries from the previous release until now. You can then troll through the news.txt file looking for interesting things to add to NEWS. ___ For major releases (e.g. 2.5 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. ___ For final (non-alpha/beta/candidate) releases, make sure the release date is fully spelled out in Doc/commontex/boilerplate.tex. ___ 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. All Python development happens on the trunk. While it's sometimes challenging to keep people from checking things in while you're making a release, it's still preferred to creating a short-lived release branch. Practically speaking, we tag and branch just before making the release. Tagging too early causes too much merging work. ___ Do a CVS update with the -A, -d, and -P flags, e.g. % cvs -q update -d -P -A To tag the tree, do the following: ___ cvs tag rXYaZ To create a maintenance branch the following steps are taken: ___ CVS tag the trunk with the symbolic name "releaseXY-fork", e.g. % cvs tag releaseXY-fork ___ Make the branch with the symbolic name "releaseXY-maint", e.g. % cvs tag -b releaseXY-maint ___ Check out a clean version of the branch 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. % export CVSROOT=cvs.sf.net:/cvsroot/python % cvs -q co -d python-25a3 -r release25-maint python/dist/src ___ cd into the branch directory. ___ Change Include/patchlevel.h in two places, to reflect the new version number you've just created. You'll want to change the PY_VERSION macro, and one or several of the version subpart macros just above PY_VERSION, as appropriate. ___ IDLE maintains its own versioning and NEWS file (Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt). There should be a number of entries reflecting new development, under a temporary header. Update that header to reflect IDLE's new version and release date. Then update Lib/idlelib/idlever.py to show a matching version. ___ Change the "%define version" line of Misc/RPM/python-2.5.spec to the same string as PY_VERSION was changed to above. E.g. %define version 2.5.1 The following line, "%define libvers", should reflect the major/minor number as one would usually see in the "/usr/lib/python" directory name. E.g. %define libvers 2.5 You also probably want to reset the %define release line to '1pydotorg' if it's not already that. If the new release uses a major/minor version which is different than is in the name of the current "Misc/RPM/python-*.spec" file, rename the file: % mv python-2.5.spec python-2.6.spec % cvs remove python-2.5.spec % cvs add python-2.6.spec % cvs commit ___ If this is a release candidate, mail Sean noting the impending release, so that RPMs can be built and tested. ___ Update the README file, which has a big banner at the top proclaiming its identity. ___ If the major (first) or minor (middle) digit of the version number changes, also update the LICENSE file. ___ There's a copy of the license in Doc/commontex/license.tex; Fred usually takes care of that. ___ 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 ___ Python/getcopyright.c ___ Doc/README (at the end) ___ Doc/commontex/copyright.tex ___ Doc/commontex/license.tex ___ 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. ___ For a final release, edit the first paragraph of Doc/whatsnew/whatsnewXX.tex 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 often takes care of this. ___ At this point, Fred will create the formatted versions of the documentation and push the appropriate files out to their FTP locations on www.python.org. The HTML format is used to build the HTML Help format for the Windows installer, but the RM doesn't need this to build the source distribution. The HTML Help format will typically be generated by whoever builds the Windows installer. Once Fred is done, there can be no further checkins on the branch in the Doc/ directory -- not even by the RM. Building the documentation is done using the Makefile in the Doc/ directory. Once all the external tools are installed (see the "Documenting Python" manual for information on the required tools), use these commands to build the formatted documentation packages:: $ make clobber ... $ make PAPER=a4 paperdist ... $ make distfiles ... The packages can be installed on the FTP server using commands like these: $ VERSION=`tools/getversioninfo` $ TARGET=/data/python-releases/doc/$VERSION $ rm *-$VERSION.tar $ ssh dinsdale.python.org mkdir $TARGET $ scp *-$VERSION.* dinsdale.python.org:$TARGET ___ For final releases, publish the documentation on python.org. This must be done by someone with write access to the pydotorg repository. Start by creating a new directory and filling it with the standard boilerplate. $VERSION is the same as for uploading the documentation, above; $OLDVERSION is the most recently published version on the site. $ cd .../pydotorg/doc/ $ svn mkdir $VERSION $VERSION/download $ cd $OLDVERSION $ svn cp content.{html,rst,yml} index.yml nav.yml ../$VERSION $ cd download $ svn cp content.{html,rst,yml} index.yml nav.yml ../$VERSION/download $ cd ../../$VERSION In $VERSION/content.rst and $VERSION/download/content.rst, change: - in the header at the top of the page, update to reflect the version number and release date - if the minor release number changed (for example, from 2.5 to 2.6), the title and link to the "What's New" document (search for "whatsnew") - make sure all the documents included in the package are listed In $VERSION/index.yml and $VERSION/download/index.yml, change the version number in the title. In versions/content.rst, add an entry for the new version near the top. Use the "rst2html" command (commonly installed with docutils) to ensure that the .rst files can be formatted without errors. Log into dinsdale.python.org using SSH and unpack a copy of the documentation into place: # on dinsdale: $ cd /data/ftp.python.org/pub/www.python.org/doc $ bzip2 -dc /data/python-releases/doc/$VERSION/html-$VERSION.tar.bz2 \ | tar xf - $ mv Python-Docs-$VERSION $VERSION $ find $VERSION -type d | xargs chmod g+s Now head back to your pydotorg checkout and commit the changes so the site will be updated: $ svn commit -m \ "Add website content for Python $VERSION documentation." Point your browser at this URL and check it out: http://www.python.org/doc/$VERSION/ There is one more change that may need to happen in the top-level doc/ directory of the website content. This should happen as soon as the release announcement has been made. The required actions are described in a separate step of this checklist. ___ Martin grabs the HTML to build the Windows helpfile. The HTML files are unpacked into a new src/html directory, and runs this command to create the project files for MS HTML Workshop: % python ..\Doc\tools\prechm.py -v 2.5 python25 HTML Workshop is then fired up on the created python25.hhp file, finally resulting in an python25.chm file. He then copies the file into the Doc directories of the build trees (once for each target architecture). ___ Martin then generates Windows installer files for each Windows target architecture (for Python 2.5, this means x86, Itanium, 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, and runs msi.py with ActivePython 2.5. 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 Itanium and AMD64). Martin checksums the files (*.msi and *.chm), uploads them to some place in the net, and emails you the location and md5sums. ___ 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-25a3 ___ Do a "cvs update" in this directory. Do NOT include the -A flag if you're working on a branch, but do include it if you're working on the trunk. You should not see any "M" files, but you may see several "P" or "U" files. I.e. you better not have any uncommitted changes in your working directory, but you may pick up some of Fred's or Martin's last minute changes. ___ If you've seen updates to existing files, update the cvs tag: % cvs tag -F r25a3 If you created a maintenance branch and you've changed any files since you branched, tag the tree -- in the branch -- now with something like % cvs tag r25 This is the tag you will use below. ___ Change to a neutral directory, i.e. one in which you can do a fresh, virgin, cvs export of the branch. You will be creating a new directory at this location, to be named "Python-X.YaZ". Do a CVS export of the tagged branch. % cd ~ % export CVSROOT=cvs.sf.net:/cvsroot/python % cvs export -rr25c2 -d Python-2.5c2 python/dist/src ___ Generate the tarball. Note that we're not using the `z' option on the tar command because 1) that's only supported by GNU tar as far as we know, and 2) we're going to max out the compression level, which isn't a supported option. % tar cf - Python-2.5c2 | gzip -9 > Python-2.5c2.tgz ___ Calculate the MD5 checksum of the tgz file you just created % md5sum Python-2.5c2.tgz Note that if you don't have the md5sum program, there is a Python replacement in the Tools/scripts/md5sum.py file. ___ 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-2.5c2.tgz % cd Python-2.5c2 % 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, 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. ___ Upload the tgz file to dinsdale.python.org using scp. ___ While you're waiting, you can start twiddling the web pages to include the announcement. ___ If necessary, and if you have the right permissions (the python.org sysadmins must set this up for you), check out the web site CVS tree by doing: % cvs -d :ext:@dinsdale.python.org:/usr/local/cvsroot co pydotorg ___ In the python.org web site CVS tree, cd to the X.Y subdirectory, and copy index.ht to new-index.ht. Be sure to do a "cvs update" first! % cd .../pydotorg % cvs -q up -P -d % cd 2.5 % cp index.ht new-index.ht ___ Edit the file for content: usually you can globally replace X.Ya(Z-1) with X.YaZ. However, you'll need to think about the "What's New?" section. ___ Copy the Misc/NEWS file to NEWS.txt in the X.Y directory for python.org; this contains the "full scoop" of changes to Python since the previous release for this version of Python. ___ Also, update the MD5 checksums. ___ Preview the web page by doing a "make" -- NOT a "make install". View the page via a file: url. ___ Similarly, edit the ../index.ht file, i.e. the python.org home page. In the Big Blue Announcement Block, move the paragraph for the new version up to the top and boldify the phrase "Python X.YaZ is out". Edit for content, and preview as above. Do NOT do a "make install" yet! ___ Also on the ../index.ht file (still the python.org home page), update the link information so that the release status is correct. Update the links in the left-hand navigation sidebar. Still do NOT do a "make install"! ___ 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 "2.5" which contains Python-2.5a2.exe and Python-2.5a2.tgz, along with a "prev" subdirectory containing Python-2.5a1.exe and Python-2.5a1.tgz. So... ___ On dinsdale, cd to ~ftp/pub/python/X.Y 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. ___ Move the .tgz file and the .exe file 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. ___ Update the X.Y/bugs.ht file if necessary. It is best to get BDFL input for this step. ___ Now preview the new-index.ht file once more. IMPORTANT: follow every link on the page to make sure it goes where you expect it to go, and that what you expect to be there is there. ___ If everything looks good, move new-index.ht to index.ht and do a "make install" in this directory. Go up to the parent directory (i.e. the root of the web page hierarchy) and do a "make install" there too. You're release is now 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 one of Guido's earlier announcements as a template, but please 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 ___ Mention the release as the most recent stable one in pydotorg:doc/faq/general.ht (section "How stable is Python?") ___ Send a SourceForge News Item about the release. From the project's "menu bar", select the "News" link; once in News, select the "Submit" link. Type a suitable subject (e.g. "Python 2.5c1 released" :-) in the Subject box, add some text to the Details box (at the very least including the release URL at www.python.org and the fact that you're happy with the release) and click the SUBMIT button. Feel free to remove any old news items. ___ 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: % cvs -d co -d python-clean python/dist/src ___ 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-25a2 | grep ^diff | grep -v CVS \ > /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 "cvs commit". Use as your log message something like "Merging the rXYaZ-maint tag back into the trunk". ___ Edit the file Include/patchlevel.h so that the PY_VERSION string says something like "X.YaZ+". Note the trailing `+' indicating that the trunk is going to be moving forward with development. E.g. the line should look like: #define PY_VERSION "2.5a2+" Make sure that the other PY_ version macros contain the correct values. Commit this change. ___ 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! Step 5 ... Verify! This can be interleaved with Step 4. 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. What Next? 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! Actually, there is one more step. You should turn over ownership of the branch to Jack Jansen. All this means is that now he will be responsible for making commits to the branch. He's going to use this to build the MacOS versions. He may send you information about the Mac release that should be merged into the informational pages on www.python.org. When he's done, he'll tag the branch something like "rX.YaZ-mac". He'll also be responsible for merging any Mac-related changes back into the trunk. 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. The Windows and source releases benefit from the close proximity of the respective release-bots. But the Mac-bot, Jack Jansen, is 6 hours away. So we add this extra step to the release process for a final release: ___ Hold up the final release until Jack approves, 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, Martin 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 (Tim uses "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 Tim 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: