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Created September 19, 2013 15:49
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release_guide.pod

release_guide.pod - guide to Rakudo releases

Rakudo's development release cycle is based on Parrot's release cycle. Parrot releases are scheduled for the third Tuesday of each month; Rakudo will generally issue its own development release two days later (on Thursday).

Each development release is given a sequential number and a code name based on an active Perl Mongers group. Rakudo's February 2009 release is #14; prior releases were bundled as part of monthly Parrot releases. For releases made so far, see the list of development releases at the end of this document.

Planned future releases

Dates are based on Parrot's expected release schedule.

2013-09-19   Rakudo #68                      masak
2013-10-17   Rakudo #69                      Coke
2013-11-21   Rakudo #70                      lizmat
2013-12-19   Rakudo #71

Suggested .pm group names for future releases

More names can be gotten from http://www.pm.org if you can't think of one with any particular significance to Perl 6 or Rakudo.

Steps to create a release (for release managers)

  1. A few days before the Rakudo release, it's a good idea to...

    • Remind people of the upcoming release, invite people to update the ChangeLog file, update the ROADMAP, choose a release name, etc.

    • Review the RT queue for tickets that might need resolving prior to the release, addressing them as needed. "Tickets that need resolving" is left your discretion. Any problem that has a large impact on users is worth addressing either as a fix or as prominent documentation (the README and/or the release announcement).

    • Create a draft release announcement in docs/announce/YYYY.MM.md in markdown format. You can often use the previous release's file as a starting point, updating the release number, version information, name, etc. as appropriate.

      $ git add docs/announce/YYYY.MM.md
$ git commit docs

    • If it's a month relatively early in the calendar year, double-check that the copyright date in the README file includes the current year. (It's not necessary to update copyright dates in other files, unless you know that a given file has been modified in a year not reflected by the file's copyright notice.)

  2. Update Rakudo's leap-second tables:

    $ perl tools/update-tai-utc.pl src/core/tai-utc.pm

    If a new leap second has been announced, tai-utc.pm will be modified, so commit the new version:

    $ git commit src/core/tai-utc.pm

    But probably there won't be any new leap seconds, in which case the file will be unchanged.

    Note: this program requires the perl module Time::y2038 be installed.

  3. As the actual release date nears, review the git log history to see if any additional items need to be added to the ChangeLog. This can be conveniently done with "git log --since=yyyy-mm-dd --reverse".

    $ git commit docs/ChangeLog

  4. When it's time to cut the release, finalize the new release announcement in docs/announce/YYYY.MM.md . (If one hasn't already been created, see step 1 above.) Highlight areas in which the new release is significant. If possible, also give some small details about the choice of release name. (If the details are a bit lengthy, this can often best be done as a separate section at the bottom of the announcement.)

    Include a list of contributors since the last release in the announcement. You can get an automatically generated list by running

    $ perl tools/contributors.pl

    Note: this program requires the perl module Date::Simple be installed.

    Please check the result manually for duplicates and other errors.

    $ git add docs/announce/YYYY.MM.md
$ git commit docs

  5. Update the release dates and names at the bottom of this file (docs/release_guide.pod). Also improve these instructions if you find any steps that are missing.

    $ git commit docs/release_guide.pod

  6. Create an NQP release with the same YYYY.MM version number as Rakudo. Follow NQP's docs/release_guide.pod file to do that.

  7. Go back to the Rakudo repository, and update the NQP dependency:

    $ echo YYYY.MM > tools/build/NQP_REVISION
$ git commit -m '[release] bump NQP revision' tools/build/NQP_REVISION

  8. Enter the new version into the VERSION file, and commit the changes:

    $ echo YYYY.MM > VERSION
$ git commit -m '[release] bump VERSION' VERSION

  9. Make sure any locally modified files have been pushed back to github.

    $ git status
$ git push

  10. Make sure everything compiles and runs from a known clean state:

    $ make realclean
$ perl Configure.pl --gen-parrot
$ make
$ make test
$ make stresstest

    There are many tests to run for the stresstest target. If you have a machine with multiple CPU cores, you may want to execute that last as

    $ TEST_JOBS=4 make stresstest

    where 4 is the number of CPU cores. This should make the total time to execute all of the tests dramatically less.

    Continue adjusting things until make stresstest passes as expected. Often this means fixing a bug, fudging a test, or (temporarily?) commenting out a test file in t/spectest.data . Use your best judgment or ask others if uncertain what to do here.

  11. Create a tarball by entering make release VERSION=YYYY.MM, where YYYY.MM is the month for which the release is being made. This will create a tarball file named rakudo-YYYY.MM.tar.gz.

    Caution: this step removes any untracked files in t/spec. So please make a backup if you have any important data in there.

  12. Unpack the tar file into another area, and test that it builds and runs properly using the same process in step 8. If there are any problems, fix them and go back to step 8.

  13. Tag the release by its release month ("YYYY.MM") and its code name.

    $ git tag -a -m"tag release #nn" YYYY.MM    # e.g., 2013.08
$ git tag -a -m"tag release #nn" CODENAME   # e.g., "Bratislava"
$ git push --tags

  14. Upload the tarball to http://rakudo.org/downloads/rakudo:

    $ scp rakudo-YYYY.MM.tar.gz rakudo@rakudo.org:public_html/downloads/rakudo/

    If you do not have permissions for that, ask one of (pmichaud, jnthn, masak, tadzik, moritz, PerlJam) on #perl6 to do it for you.

  15. To avoid public confusion with Rakudo Star releases, we now publish compiler release announcements ONLY to perl6-compiler@perl.org. (We may restart widespread announcements of compiler releases once they are known, or we may begin publishing a single announcement for both.)

    Don't send out any announcements until the files are actually available per step 14 above.

  16. Update the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakudo.

  17. You're done! Celebrate with the appropriate amount of fun.

Development releases so far

2009-02-26   Rakudo #14 "Vienna"             (pmichaud)
2009-03-20   Rakudo #15 "Oslo"               (pmichaud)
2009-04-23   Rakudo #16 "Bratislava"         (pmichaud)
2009-05-21   Rakudo #17 "Stockholm"          (pmichaud)
2009-06-18   Rakudo #18 "Pittsburgh"         (pmichaud)
2009-07-23   Rakudo #19 "Chicago"            (moritz)
2009-08-20   Rakudo #20 "PDX"                (kyle)
2009-09-17   Rakudo #21 "Seattle"            (particle)
2009-10-22   Rakudo #22 "Thousand Oaks"      (duff)
2009-11-19   Rakudo #23 "Lisbon"             (masak)
2009-12-17   Rakudo #24 "Seoul"              (chromatic)
2010-01-22   Rakudo #25 "Minneapolis"        (pmichaud)
2010-02-18   Rakudo #26 "Amsterdam"          (mberends)
2010-03-18   Rakudo #27 "Copenhagen"         (smash)
2010-04-22   Rakudo #28 "Moscow"             (moritz)
2010-05-20   Rakudo #29 "Erlangen"           (colomon)
2010-06-17   Rakudo #30 "Kiev"               (masak)
2010-07-22   Rakudo #31 "Atlanta"            (Coke)
2010-08-19   Rakudo #32 "Pisa"               (mathw)
2010-09-23   Rakudo #33 "Milan"              (moritz)
2010-10-21   Rakudo #34 "Paris"              (duff)
2010-11-18   Rakudo #35 "Melbourne"          (masak)
2010-12-23   Rakudo #36 "New York"           (smash)
2011-01-20   Rakudo #37 "BristolBath"        (tadzik)
2011-02-17   Rakudo #38 "Toulouse"           (arnsholt)
2011-03-17   Rakudo #39 "Orlando"            (jdhore)
2011-04-21   Rakudo #40 "ZA"                 (duff)
2011-05-19   Rakudo #41 "Dahut"              (jdhore)
2011-06-23   Rakudo #42 "Bruxelles"          (jdhore)
2011-07-21   Rakudo #43 "Beijing"            (mberends,moritz)
2011-08-18    -- none --
2011-09-30   Rakudo #44 "Riga"               (tadzik)
2011-10-20   Rakudo #45 "Houston"            (duff)
2011-11-17   Rakudo #46 "London"             (tadzik)
2011-12-22   Rakudo #47 "Columbus"           (moritz)
2012-01-23   Rakudo #48 "Toronto"            (moritz)
2012-02-23   Rakudo #49 "SPb"                (masak)
2012-03-22   Rakudo #50 "Argentina"          (masak)
2012-04-19   Rakudo #51 "Brazos Valley"      (Coke)
2012-04-25   2012.04.1                       (moritz)
2012-05-17   Rakudo #52 "MadMongers"         (tadzik)
2012-06-21   Rakudo #53 "Strasbourg"         (duff)
2012-07-19   Rakudo #54 "Tallinn"            (masak)
2012-08-23   Rakudo #55 "Frankfurt"          (tadzik,moritz)
2012-09-20   Rakudo #56 "Perl"               (masak)
2012-09-29   2012.09.1                       (pmichaud)
2012-10-18   Rakudo #57 "Tokyo"              (duff)
2012-11-22   Rakudo #58 "Walnut"             (FROGGS)
2012-12-20   Rakudo #59 "Warszawa"           (masak)
2013-01-17   Rakudo #60 "Sonoma"             (isBEKaml)
2013-02-21   Rakudo #61 "drinkers"           (tadzik)
2013-02-23   2013.02.1                       (moritz)
2013-03-21   Rakudo #62 "Singapore"          (masak)
2013-04-18   Rakudo #63 "Albany"             (Coke)
2013-05-23   Rakudo #64 "Austin"             (FROGGS)
2013-06-20   Rakudo #65 "Poznan"             (masak)
2013-07-18   Rakudo #66 "Edinburgh"          (moritz,lizmat)
2013-08-22   Rakudo #67 "Bicycle"            (moritz)

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2009-2013, The Perl Foundation.

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