lotus/documentation/misc/RELEASE_ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md

Release Issue Template

Lotus X.Y.Z Release

We're happy to announce Lotus X.Y.Z...

🗺 Must-dos for the release

🌟 Nice-to-haves for the release

<List of items with PRs and/or Issues to be considered for this release>

🚢 Estimated shipping date

<Date this release will ship on if everything goes to plan (week beginning...)>

🔦 Highlights

< top highlights for this release notes >

✅ Release Checklist

Note for whomever is owning the release: please capture notes as comments in this issue for anything you noticed that could be improved for future releases. There is a Post Release step below for incorporating changes back into the RELEASE_ISSUE_TEMPLATE, and this is easier done by collecting notes from along the way rather than just thinking about it at the end.

First steps:

• Fork a new branch (release/vX.Y.Z) from master and make any further release related changes to this branch. If any "non-trivial" changes get added to the release, uncheck all the checkboxes and return to this stage.
• Bump the version in version.go in the master branch to vX.(Y+1).0-dev.

Prepping an RC:

• version string in build/version.go has been updated (in the release/vX.Y.Z branch).
• tag commit with vX.Y.Z-rcN
• cut a pre-release here

Testing an RC:

• Stage 0 - Automated Testing

  • Automated Testing
    • CI: Ensure that all tests are passing.
    • Testground tests

• Stage 1 - Internal Testing

  • Binaries
    • Ensure the RC release has downloadable binaries
  • Upgrade our testnet infra
    • Wait 24 hours, confirm nodes stay in sync
  • Upgrade our mainnet infra
  • Subset of development full archival nodes
  • Subset of bootstrappers (1 per region)
  • Confirm nodes stay in sync
  • Metrics report
    • Block validation time
    • Memory / CPU usage
    • Number of goroutines
    • IPLD block read latency
    • Bandwidth usage
  • If anything has worsened significantly, investigate + fix
  • Confirm the following work (some combination of Testground / Calibnet / Mainnet / beta users)
    • Seal a sector
    • make a deal
    • Submit a PoSt
    • (optional) let a sector go faulty, and see it be recovered

• Stage 2 - Community Testing

  • Inform beta lotus users (@lotus-early-testers in Filecoin Slack #fil-lotus)

• Stage 3 - Community Prod Testing

  • Documentation
    • Ensure that CHANGELOG.md is up to date
    • Check if any config updates are needed
  • Invite the wider community through (link to the release issue):
    • Check Create a discussion for this release when tagging for the major/close-to-final rcs(new features, hot-fixes) release
    • Link the disucssion in #fil-lotus on Filecoin slack

• Stage 4 - Release

  • Final preparation
    • Verify that version string in version.go has been updated.
    • Ensure that CHANGELOG.md is up to date
    • Prep the changelog using scripts/mkreleaselog, and add it to CHANGELOG.md
    • Merge release-vX.Y.Z into the releases branch.
    • Tag this merge commit (on the releases branch) with vX.Y.Z
    • Cut the release here.
    • Final announcements
      • Update network.filecoin.io for mainnet, calib and nerpa.
      • repost in #fil-lotus-announcement in filecoin slack
      • Inform node providers (Protofire, Digital Ocean..)

• Post-Release

  • Merge the releases branch back into master, ignoring the changes to version.go (keep the -dev version from master). Do NOT delete the releases branch when doing so!
  • Update RELEASE_ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md with any improvements determined from this latest release iteration.
  • Create an issue using RELEASE_ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md for the next release.

❤️ Contributors

See the final release notes!

⁉️ Do you have questions?

Leave a comment here if you have any questions.