Plone release process#

This chapter describes the process to release Plone and its packages.

Release process for Plone packages#

To keep the Plone software stack maintainable, the Python egg release process must be automated to a high degree. This happens by enforcing Python packaging best practices, and then making automated releases using zest.releaser.

Plone coredev specific features extend on that using plone.releaser.

Anyone with necessary PyPI permissions must be able to make a new release by running the fullrelease command. This command includes the following requirements.

Note

All files mentioned in this list may be written in Markdown or reStructuredText and have the appropriate file name suffix.

  • All releases must be hosted on PyPI.

  • All versions must be tagged in version control.

  • Each package must have a README file with links to the version control repository and issue tracker.

  • CHANGES (or docs/HISTORY) must be always up-to-date and must contain list of functional changes which may affect package users.

  • CHANGES must contain release dates.

  • README and CHANGES must be visible on PyPI.

  • Released eggs must contain generated gettext .mo files, but these files must not be committed to the repository. The .mo files can be created with the zest.pocompile add-on, which should be installed together with zest.releaser.

  • .gitignore and MANIFEST.in must reflect the files going in to the package (must include page template and .po files).

See also

High quality automated package releases for Python with zest.releaser.

Special packages#

The Plone Release Team releases the core Plone packages. Several other people also have the rights to release individual packages on PyPI. If you have those rights on your account, you should feel free to make releases.

Some packages need special care, or should be done only by specific people, as they know what they are doing. These are:

Products.CMFPlone, Plone, and plone.app.upgrade

Please leave these to the release managers, Eric Steele and Maurits van Rees.

plone.app.locales

Please leave this to the i18n team lead, Mikel Larreategi @erral. plone.staticresources, mockup, plonetheme.barceloneta, plone.classicui:

Please leave this to the Classic UI team, especially Peter Mathis @petschki, Johannes Raggam @thet, and Maik Derstappen @MrTango.

plone.restapi and plone.volto:

Please leave these to Timo Stollenwerk @tisto or David Glick @davisagli.

Plone core release process checklist#

  1. Check Jenkins status. Check the latest Plone coredev job on Jenkins. It should be green, but if it is not, fix the problem first.

  2. Clone buildout.coredev, then check out and build the version to be released.

    git clone git@github.com:plone/buildout.coredev.git
cd buildout.coredev
git checkout 6.1
./bootstrap.sh
bin/buildout -c buildout.cfg

  3. Check packages for updates. Add to or remove from checkouts.cfg accordingly. This script may help:

    bin/manage report --interactive

    This step should not be needed, because we do the check for every single commit, but people may still have forgotten to add a package to the checkouts.cfg file.

  4. Check packages individually.

    Use the bin/fullrelease script from the core development buildout. This includes extra checks that we have added in plone.releaser. It guides you through all the next steps.

    1. Check changelog. Check if CHANGES is up-to-date. All changes since the last release should be included. A "Fixes" or "New" header should be included, with the relevant changes under it. Upgrade notes are best placed here as well. Compare git log HEAD...<LAST_RELEASE_TAG> with CHANGES, or from zest.releaser use the command lasttaglog <optional tag if not latest>.

    2. Run pyroma.

    3. Run check-manifest.

    4. Check package "best practices" (README, CHANGES, src directory).

    5. Check if the version in setup.py is correct and follows our versioning best practice.

    6. Make a release with zest.releaser: bin/fullrelease.

    7. Remove packages from the auto-checkout section in checkouts.cfg, and update versions.cfg.

  5. Make sure plone.app.upgrade contains an upgrade step for the future Plone release.

  6. Update CMFPlone version in profiles/default/metadata.xml.

  7. Create an issue in https://github.com/collective/plone.app.locales/issues to ask the i18n team lead @erral to do a plone.app.locales release.

  8. Create a pending release (directory) on dist.plone.org.

    1. Copy all core packages there.

    2. Possibly make an alpha or beta release of CMFPlone.

    3. Copy the versions.cfg file from coredev to there.

  9. Write an email to the Plone developers list announcing a pending release.

  10. Create a post on the Plone Community Forum announcing a pending release.

  11. Update plone.app.locales version.

  12. Create a unified changelog.

    bin/manage changelog

  13. Make the final release on dist.plone.org (remove "-pending")

  14. Update the "-latest" link on dist.plone.org.

  15. For Plone 5.x versions only, create the new release on Launchpad.

  16. Create a release page on plone.org

  17. Wait for installers to be uploaded to Launchpad, with a link to the plone.org release page.

  18. Publish release page on plone.org.

  19. Update plone.org homepage links to point to the new release.

  20. Send out announcement to the plone-announce email distribution list for the final release.

  21. Create a post on the Plone Community Forum announcing the final release.

  22. Ask the security team to update the Hotfixes page in the configuration control panel.