Release Activities

WARNING: Use this page as a "template", create a new issue with the contents of this page and do not alter this unless you're adding/removing item(s).

These are the release activities to be performed when releasing GoCD.

Review

• Review pull requests for this milestone and take a call on testing.
• Review issues of this milestone, close ones that are fixed and tested. Move those yet to be fixed
• Use this to
  • prepare release notes for www.gocd.org at https://github.com/gocd/www.go.cd
  • Update changelog on api.gocd.org
  • Update changelog on plugin-api.gocd.org
• Ensure that GO_VERSION_NEXT in build.gradle (link to example 21.4.0 version here) is correct.

Sanity Testing

• On supported browsers
• Make sure the test drive package works (starts up, registers an agent, and can build a pipeline).

Publish GoCD.

(NOTE: Publishing stable release will draft a GitHub release, resulting in sending an email about the GitHub release to the community who are watching/subscribed to gocd/gocd. Hence we should make sure that the current release notes are available at www.gocd.org/releases before drafting a release.)

• Disable GoCD server timed backup if you don't want to be interrupted while doing this.
• Deploy release notes for current release on www.gocd.org. Make sure those are available at www.gocd.org/releases. Do this via GitHub Actions: https://github.com/gocd/www.go.cd/actions
• Kick off PublishStableRelease pipeline. This should trigger some downstream pipelines for websites, Docker, Chocolatey, etc.
  1. Select the target version of the code-sign pipeline material to promote
  2. NOTE remember to manually select the right revision of the codesigning material, or fan-in won't trigger later. Usually this will be the latest commit, however you can check the VSM or materials of the codesigning build you are promoting to double-check. If it doesn't work, don't worry, you can re-run!
  3. NOTE specify REALLY_REALLY_UPLOAD environment variable with value YES_I_REALLY_REALLY_WANT_TO_UPLOAD.
• Trigger the promote-to-stable stage of the gocd-trial-installers pipeline for the corresponding build. Use the VSM to locate the correct installer build for the release. Start from the VSM of the PublishStableRelease pipeline, and then go to the VSM of the installers pipeline from that VSM. That'll get you the right run of the gocd-trial-installers pipeline to use. Test it and promote it to stable.
• Enable or put back the GoCD server timed backup if you had disabled it earlier.

API

• Verify: Check new plugin-api.jar at https://search.maven.org/artifact/cd.go.plugin/go-plugin-api or https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/cd/go/plugin/go-plugin-api/ and update plugin java docs. (taken care by upload-to-maven pipeline) -- might be delayed a bit.

Github

post-release-github-activities pipeline for the first two tasks

• Verify: A tag was created for the new version as <version> (such as 21.2.0) in repository (https://github.com/gocd/gocd/tags)
• Verify: A Github release was created (https://github.com/gocd/gocd/releases)

Website and Docs

• Verify that the various doc sites's /current are updated and a release branch was created. (This is done by bump_up_docs_version. Automatically triggered after publish stable release.)
  • docs.go.cd
    • Verify that the GitHub action finished successfully: https://github.com/gocd/docs.go.cd/actions
    • Verify that https://docs.gocd.org/ shows the correct "current" and "under development" links
    • Verify that a new branch is created whose name is the same as the new release (not next release): https://github.com/gocd/docs.go.cd/branches/all
  • developer.go.cd
    • Verify that the GitHub action finished successfully: https://github.com/gocd/developer.go.cd/actions
    • Verify that https://developer.gocd.org/ shows the correct "current" and "under development" links
    • Verify that a new branch is created whose name is the same as the new release (not next release): https://github.com/gocd/developer.go.cd/branches/all
  • api.go.cd
    • Verify that the GitHub action finished successfully: https://github.com/gocd/api.go.cd/actions
    • Verify that https://api.gocd.org/ shows the correct "current" and "under development" links
    • Verify that a new branch is created whose name is the same as the new release (not next release): https://github.com/gocd/api.go.cd/branches/all
  • plugin-api.go.cd
    • Verify that the GitHub action finished successfully: https://github.com/gocd/plugin-api.go.cd/actions
    • Verify that https://plugin-api.gocd.org/ shows the correct "current" and "under development" links
    • Verify that a new branch is created whose name is the same as the new release (not next release): https://github.com/gocd/plugin-api.go.cd/branches/all

Cloud images and installers

NOTE: Pipeline publish-cloud-based-artifacts creates and uploads the following.

• Verify: Docker images
  • Verify that the full description was updated on all relevant dockerhub repos in gocd organization - taken care of by the publish-cloud-based-artifacts pipeline.
    • https://hub.docker.com/r/gocd/gocd-server
    • https://hub.docker.com/r/gocd/gocd-agent-alpine
    • https://hub.docker.com/r/gocd/gocd-agent-debian-11
    • https://hub.docker.com/r/gocd/gocd-agent-debian-12
    • https://hub.docker.com/r/gocd/gocd-agent-docker-dind
    • https://hub.docker.com/r/gocd/gocd-agent-ubuntu-20.04
    • https://hub.docker.com/r/gocd/gocd-agent-ubuntu-22.04
    • https://hub.docker.com/r/gocd/gocd-agent-ubuntu-24.04
    • https://hub.docker.com/r/gocd/gocd-agent-wolfi
• Verify: Chocolatey installers
  • GoCD agent installer
  • GoCD server installer

Helm Chart

• Merge the PR (to update the helm) to https://github.com/gocd/helm-chart to bump up the app version created via upgrade-helm-chart-version pipeline.

Publicize (Last activity in the release)

• Send mail to Google groups - {go-cd,go-cd-dev}@googlegroups.com.

Post release

• Verify: Update version under installer-testing
  • https://github.com/gocd/installer-testing/blob/master/pipeline-as-code/installer-tests.gocd.yaml#L12

Next steps

• Create a new milestone and set the due date.
• Create a new project wall for next release:
  1. Go to: https://github.com/gocd/gocd/projects/new
  2. Set the Project board name to the next GoCD release version.
  3. Set Basic Kanban as the project template.
  4. Hit Create Project.
  5. Upon project creation: Create a new column for QA Done
• Merge (auto created) PR which updates build.gradle file to next revision: https://github.com/gocd/gocd/pulls
• Verify: go-plugins build.gradle has been updated - https://github.com/gocd/go-plugins/blob/master/build.gradle#L29
• Close the related milestone and project
• Update all GO_VERSION in environmental variables (leave parameters as is) in cruise-config.xml file on build.go.cd
• Check if other plugins in https://github.com/gocd-contrib or https://github.com/gocd need a new version to be released