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Publishing a new kcp release

Note

You currently need write access to the kcp-dev/kcp repository to perform these tasks.

Create git tags

Prerequisite - make sure you have a GPG signing key

  1. https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/managing-commit-signature-verification/generating-a-new-gpg-key
  2. https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/managing-commit-signature-verification/adding-a-gpg-key-to-your-github-account
  3. https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/managing-commit-signature-verification/telling-git-about-your-signing-key

Create the tags

kcp has 2 go modules, and a unique tag is needed for each module every time we create a new release.

  1. git fetch from the main kcp repository (kcp-dev/kcp) to ensure you have the latest commits
  2. Tag the main module
  3. If your git remote for kcp-dev/kcp is named something other than upstream, change REF accordingly

  4. If you are creating a release from a release branch, change main in REF accordingly, or you can make REF a commit hash.

    REF=upstream/main
TAG=v1.2.3
git tag --sign --message "$TAG" "$TAG" "$REF"

  5. Tag the sdk module, following the same logic as above for REF and TAG

    REF=upstream/main
TAG=v1.2.3
git tag --sign --message "sdk/$TAG" "sdk/$TAG" "$REF"

    Push the tags

REMOTE=upstream
TAG=v1.2.3
git push "$REMOTE" "$TAG" "sdk/$TAG"

If it's a new minor version

If this is the first release of a new minor version (e.g. the last release was v0.7.x, and you are releasing the first 0.8.x version), follow the following steps.

Otherwise, you can skip to Generate release notes

Create a release branch

Set REMOTE, REF, and VERSION as appropriate.

REMOTE=upstream
REF="$REMOTE/main"
VERSION=1.2
git checkout -b "release-$VERSION" "$REF"
git push "$REMOTE" "release-$VERSION"

Generate release notes

To generate release notes from the information in PR descriptions you should use Kubernetes' release-notes tool. This tool will use the release-notes blocks in PR descriptions and the kind/ labels on those PRs to find user-facing changes and categorize them. You can run the command below to install the latest version of it:

go install k8s.io/release/cmd/release-notes@latest

To use release-notes you will need to generate a GitHub API token (Settings -> Developers settings -> Personal access tokens -> Fine-grained tokens). A token with Public Repositories (read-only) repository access and no further permissions is sufficient. Store the token somewhere safe and export it as GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable.

Then, run run the release-notes tool (set PREV_VERSION to the version released before the one you have just released).

TAG=v1.2.3
PREV_TAG=v1.2.2
release-notes \
  --required-author='' \
  --org kcp-dev \
  --repo kcp \
  --branch main \
  --start-rev $PREV_TAG \
  --end-rev $TAG \
  --output CHANGELOG.md

Don't commit the CHANGELOG.md to the repository, just keep it around to update the release on GitHub (next step).

Review/edit/publish the release in GitHub

The goreleaser workflow automatically creates a draft GitHub release for each tag.

  1. Navigate to the draft release for the tag you just pushed. You'll be able to find it under the releases page.
  2. If the release notes have been pre-populated, delete them.
  3. Copy release notes from the CHANGELOG.md file you generated in the previous step.
  4. Publish the release.

Trigger documentation deployment

Documentation for the respective release branch needs to be triggered manually after the release branch has been pushed.

  1. Navigate to the Generate and push docs GitHub Action.
  2. Hit the "Run forkflow" button, run workflow against release-$VERSION.
  3. Make sure the triggered workflow ran and deployed a new version of the documentation to docs.kcp.io.

Notify

  1. Create an email addressed to kcp-dev@googlegroups.com and kcp-users@googlegroups.com
  2. Subject: [release] <version> e.g. [release] v0.8.0
  3. In the body, include noteworthy changes
  4. Provide a link to the release in GitHub for the full release notes
  5. Post a message in the #kcp-dev Slack channel