ReleasingSoftware

Warning

This page is not up-to-date and does not make the order of steps for publishing a release clear. Refer to Releaseme for up-to-date, clear information about making software releases.

This page documents the steps to release software packages developed by the KDE community. This guide applies to all software which is not part of a bigger bundle like Frameworks, Plasma and KDE Gear, which have specific release cycles and release managers.

Sanity Checklist

Before releasing a beta or stable release of a KDE project you should have completed (or at least be going through) KDE Review.

Rollout of Gitlab CI: https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-devel/2021-October/000735.html , Gitlab CI Dashboards and retirement of build.kde.org: https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-devel/2022-September/001270.html, Debugging KDE CI runners: https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-devel/2022-October/001401.html

Sysadmin request form for bugs.kde.org products.

For KDE neon ask on KDE neon room

Example CI job at e.g. plasma-disks CI and plasma-disks reuse jobs

Branching

Before you create a release, if you plan to maintain a stable branch and release bugfix version from it, branch it off of master. The name should be "$MAJOR.$MINOR" or similar, for example "1.2". This branch will be called "stable branch" in the text below. Push the branch to the remote repository.

git checkout -b 1.2
git push --set-upstream origin 1.2

You can also branch after making a tar using releaseme's branchme.rb script.

If you already have a stable branch, you can directly commit a new release from that branch. If you don't plan to keep releasing directly from master only, you don't need to create a stable branch.

Once you have created and pushed a new stable branch, you'll need to perform a few steps:

• E-mail kde-i18n-doc to ask for translations to also be branched and repo-metadata to be updated, making sure that you get a confirmation that your request has been handled.
• Update repo-metadata:
  • Change the branch name for "stable-kf6-qt6" in the file dependencies/logical-module-structure.json.
  • Update dependencies listed in the file "dependency-data-stable-kf6-qt6" if needed (wildcard rules might keep you covered, explicit listing done only for non-basic needs).
• In case your project is set up to be built with Craft, update the configuration of craft-blueprints-kde for your project.

Freezing

To prevent regressions early before a release, it is suggested to announce and enforce a "feature-freeze". From this point on, no new features should be introduced to the stable branch.

Before a release, you'll need to give translators a notification about the upcoming new version. If you created a stable branch, update kde:sysadmin/repo-metadata (read the README.md first), set the "stable i18n branch" to the stable branch. Then write an email about one month before the release or so to the translators at on KDE i18n-doc <[email protected]> . At this point, do not do any changes to translated strings, i.e. consider your branch (or master, if you didn't create a separate branch) to be "string-frozen". If you do need a string changed, ask the translators for a string-freeze exception.

Note: Other feature branches will always be unfrozen, and any kind of strings or features can be changed/added. If you created a separate release branch, also the master branch is not frozen.

Versioning in source code and libraries

When you are ready to do a release, make sure the current HEAD in the stable branch has the correct version string set in its source code as well as the SOVERSION etc., to reflect what you want to release.

A good suggestion is to have something like this in your top-level CMakeLists.txt:

cmake_policy(SET CMP0048 NEW)
project(kgraphviewer VERSION "2.4.0")

ecm_setup_version(${PROJECT_VERSION}
    VARIABLE_PREFIX KGRAPHVIEWER
    SOVERSION ${PROJECT_VERSION_MAJOR}
    VERSION_HEADER "${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/config-kgraphviewer.h"
)

#usage somewhere in cmake for a library:
set_target_properties(kgraphviewerlib PROPERTIES VERSION ${PROJECT_VERSION} SOVERSION ${KGRAPHVIEWER_SOVERSION} OUTPUT_NAME kgraphviewer )

The config-kgraphviewer.h looks like this:

/* config-kgraphviewer.h.  Generated by cmake from config.-kgraphviewer.h.cmake */

#ifndef CONFIG_KGRAPHVIEWER_H
#define CONFIG_KGRAPHVIEWER_H

#include <kdeversion.h>

#define KGRAPHVIEWER_MAJOR_VERSION @KGRAPHVIEWER_VERSION_MAJOR@
#define KGRAPHVIEWER_MINOR_VERSION @KGRAPHVIEWER_VERSION_MINOR@
#define KGRAPHVIEWER_PATCH_VERSION @KGRAPHVIEWER_VERSION_PATCH@

#define KGRAPHVIEWER_VERSION_STR "@KGRAPHVIEWER_VERSION_MAJOR@.@KGRAPHVIEWER_VERSION_MINOR@.@KGRAPHVIEWER_VERSION_PATCH@"

#define KGRAPHVIEWER_VERSION KDE_MAKE_VERSION(@KGRAPHVIEWER_VERSION_MAJOR@, @KGRAPHVIEWER_VERSION_MINOR@, @KGRAPHVIEWER_VERSION_PATCH@)

#endif // CONFIG_KGRAPHVIEWER_H

Then you can include the generated config-kgraphviewer.h in e.g. your main.cpp and use the KGRAPHVIEWER_VERSION_STR define and similar. You can also install this file (useful for libraries to do feature-detection based on the version number).

NOTE: Don't forget to also increase the version number in master, after you branched off. I.e. as soon as you created a "1.2" branch, ensure master's source code uses a version string such as "1.2.80" which is analogous to 1.3 Alpha 1. "1.2.90" would be 1.3 Beta 1.

Versioning in AppStream files

The AppStream appdata.xml and metainfo.xml file should include the release version and date, this info will be shown in software centers (Discover, Gnome Software) and repositories such as Flathub.

You can use the script in https://invent.kde.org/sysadmin/appstream-metainfo-release-update to add and update the release info.

Creating a Tarball

The releaseme scripts help with that.

First check you have a working gpg2 install and a key set up which can do the digital signature:

echo test > test.text; gpg2 --armor --detach-sign -o test.text.sig test.text

If that works create the tar:

./tarme.rb --version 0.1 --origin stable myapp

This will create myapp-0.1.tar.xz and its digital signature myapp-0.1.tar.xz.sig

--origin can also be trunk. It will use the Git branch set in trunk_kf5 or stable_kf5 in the i18n.json file in your project's repo_metadata

Uploading the Tar

Read readme: ftp://upload.kde.org/README

Upload to ftp://upload.kde.org/, for example via curl

 curl -T "myapp-0.1.tar.xz{,.sig}" ftp://upload.kde.org/incoming/

or via the traditional ftp command line program:

 echo put myapp-0.1.tar.xz | ftp ftp://upload.kde.org/incoming/
 echo put myapp-0.1.tar.xz.sig | ftp ftp://upload.kde.org/incoming/

Then, file a sysadmin ticket to notify about the upload and to provide the checksums for verification: https://go.kde.org/u/systickets

Tagging

When you publish your tar you should also push the signed tag to the Git repo.

./tagme.rb --version 0.1

This uses git running gpg to tag, you may need to set with (see https://help.github.com/articles/telling-git-about-your-gpg-key/)

 git config --global user.signingkey

test with

 git init; echo asdf > asdf; git add asdf; git commit -a -m 'commit'; git tag -s -m 'Tagging #{options[:version]}' v123 HEAD

Updating bugzilla

The new version should be added to the list of available versions to the component/product. If you don't have enough permissions, create a sysadmin ticket for that, or ask this a part of the ticket created for the tarballs (see #Uploading_the_Tar)

Announcing the Release

Once the sysadmins moved the tarball, you can announce the release. First send a mail to [email protected] and your project's mailing list(s). The mail can be short and link to a longer announcement blog post or news item. If you write a detailed blog post, make sure that that your blog/site is aggregated on planet.kde.org.

You should include the full fingerprint to the GPG key used to sign the tar and tags in your announce e-mail. (Don't put it on a wiki.) Upload your key to openPGP key servers using gpg2 --send-keys <fingerprint>

Ideally you also want to sign your email with the key in question to proof that you have control over the key.