Foreman 3.7.0-rc3 release process

[iballou]

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Roles

• Release Owner: @iballou
• Release Engineer: @Odilhao
• Installer Maintainer: @evgeni

Preparing code: 2023-06-06

Installer Maintainer

• Make patch releases of installer modules that have important changes
  • Branch to MAJ.MIN-stable if recent changes to the module aren’t suitable for patch (x.y.z) release

Release Owner

• Remove/change target version field for any open Redmine tickets assigned to the release still (next minor, unset it or reject)
• Ensure that code in git matches issues fixed in 3.7.0-rc3 in redmine. issues.rb can be used to generate a comparison between the two.

Tagging a release: 2023-06-06

Release Owner

• Make sure test_3_7_stable and smart-proxy3.7-stable-test are green using verify_green_jobs
• Run make -C locale tx-update in foreman 3.7-stable
• Update release version similar to here
• Tag the projects
  • Create tags tag_project
  • Push tags tag_push
• Run the Jenkins Tarballs Release using release_tarballs to create tarballs

Release Engineer

• Sign Tarballs
  • Download
  • Inspect
  • Sign and upload detached signatures

Note: If for some reason there was an issue with the tarballs that required uploading new tarballs, CDN cache should be invalidated so that the builders use the updated tarballs.

Packaging a release: 2023-06-06

Release Engineer

Background documentation

• Update foreman-packaging branches
  • rpm/3.7
  • deb/3.7
• Wait for packages to be built using wait_packaging (checks rpm/3.7 and deb/3.7). This takes a while so you can already start on the manual updates.
• Check for outstanding PRs against 3.7 packaging, and merge if possible:
  • rpm/3.7
  • deb/3.7
• Sign the RPMs in the release
  • Download
  • Sign
  • Upload RPM signatures
  • Upload RPMs
• Sign RPMs for client repos (call scripts with PROJECT=client)
  • Download
  • Sign
  • Upload RPM signatures
  • Upload RPMs
• Kick off the release pipeline by calling release_pipeline
• Kick off the client pipeline by calling PROJECT=client release_pipeline
• Kick off the plugins pipeline by calling plugins_pipeline

Manual updates: 2023-06-06

Release Owner

• Update manual if applicable for any additional installation steps
• Update the website’s release notes section in the manual
  • Using the release notes script: ./scripts/release_notes.rb foreman 3.7.0
  • Append CLI release notes taken from the hammer-cli and hammer-cli-foreman changelogs, in theforeman.org.
  • Headline features: half a dozen important features with a few sentences description each
  • Upgrade warnings: all important notices that users must be aware of before upgrading
  • Deprecations: anything that will be removed in a future release
  • Submit this as a PR
• Update docs.theforeman.org
  • Using redmine_release_notes script (see README as well): ./guides/doc-Release_Notes/redmine_release_notes foreman 3.7.0 > ./guides/doc-Release_Notes/topics/foreman-3.7.0.adoc
  • Append CLI release notes taken from the hammer-cli and hammer-cli-foreman changelogs to foreman-3.7.0.adoc.
  • Make sure foreman-contributors.adoc is updated
  • Make sure headline features, upgrade warnings and deprecations are in sync with the website
  • Submit this as a PR
• Update the apipie docs and place those in the foreman/3.7/apidoc directory if any changes were made to the API

After the packages have been released

Release Owner

• Update theforeman.org
  • Update installer options section using the get-params script (Note: this step can only be done after packages are released)
• Announce the release on Discourse using release_announcement
• Update the topic in #theforeman channel on Libera.Chat
• Share the release announcement on Twitter
• Release pipeline will trigger foreman-plugins-3.7-deb-test-pipeline and foreman-plugins-3.7-rpm-test-pipeline. These don’t block releases but can be used to understand known issues around plugin compatibility with Foreman 3.7.