[parted-devel] Release procedure

[Otavio Salvador]

Jim Meyering <jim at meyering.net> writes:

>> * Update regression tests.
>
> Isn't this more something that'd be done mainly during development?
> Otherwise, (doing it at release time) it's too easy to introduce tests
> that are not as portable as they should be.

Yes. You're right.

>> * Run regression tests.
>
> This is a must, but it is also something that should be done frequently
> during development.  Ideally, via an automated procedure, a la buildbot,
> so that when a new problem arises it is detected as soon as possible.

We would like to provide more test cases for the unittest. I've
included the basic CHECK framework on parted to allow this and now we
need to write the tests. After we have some, we can install buildbot
and put slaves around the world in how many different plataforms we
can :-)

>> * Test platforms (see manual).
>> * Write release notes.
>> * Update copyright dates.
>
> For GNU projects, long-standing practice is to update copyright dates only
> as files are changed, and not en-masse at release time.  If you use emacs,
> put this in your ~/.emacs file:
>
>   (add-hook 'before-save-hook 'copyright-update)
>
> The only exception is to update the date in --version output (if needed)
> to include the current year, and that can/should be automated.  Hmm.. I
> see that parted --version doesn't include copyright information.
> I'll fix that shortly, once gnulib things are integrated.

Right :-)

>> * Update manual (including copyright, history, and index).
>> * Update other docs, see PartedDocumentation.
>> * Copy to repositories and update info there.
>
> For coreutils, I use two scripts:
>    announce-gen: to generate most of the message to be sent to the mailing list
>    gnupload: to sign and upload .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, and .xdelta to
>      the GNU ftp server (stable releases go to ftp.gnu.org, others
>      to alpha.gnu.org)
>
> It'll be trivial to pull both of those from gnulib, and integrate them
> into Makefile.am rules -- if no one objects, I'll do that, too.

No objections. Just check our current scripts since there's already
one to handle the sign. Check which one looks better and then follow
with it :-)

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