Release checklist Plone 6.1.0a1

[mauritsvanrees]

See the release schedule.

Release packages, update versions

• Check Jenkins Status: should be green. (This should be checked often during the release process.)
• In coredev, check packages for updates: bin/manage report --interactive. This is less needed now that we have mr.roboto to add packages to the checkouts. Use bin/versioncheck to see if any new PyPI releases are worth adding, or check the artifact of the versioncheck GitHub Action.
• Release individual packages from checkouts.cfg.
• Check that the version numbers of CMFPlone metadata.xml and latest upgrade step are in sync, and that they are higher than in the previous Plone release.
• Handle special packages, often handled by special people. :-) You can can ping people in the release-team channel on Discord, in the current issue, or individually:
  • plonetheme.barceloneta needs a release on PyPI and npmjs. Ask Peter Mathis (petschki).
  • plone.staticresources and mockup. Ask on Discord in the classic-ui or ask Johannes (thet), Peter Mathis (petschki) or Maik (MrTango).
  • plone.restapi and maybe plone.volto. If needed, ask the Plone REST api team or Timo (tisto) for a new release.
  • plone.app.locales. Create an issue there or ask Mikel (erral).
  • Release plone.app.upgrade and Plone yourself.
  • Update the versions of those packages in versions.cfg.
• Make an alpha/beta/release candidate release of Products.CMFPlone (e.g. 6.1.0a1, later 6.1.0b1 and 6.1.0rc1). Fine to release this on PyPI. Once Plone 6.1 is final, we can continue doing release candidates for the bugfix releases, so people can try it in a pending release.

Release notes, constraints, dist.plone.org

• Adjust coredev branch release/6.1-dev. Most importantly, the auto-checkout list in checkouts.cfg should be empty, and the versions.cfg and requirements.txt should be the same. One way that works for me: git checkout release/6.1-dev; git reset --hard 6.1; git reset origin/release/6.1-dev. Then check which changes you want to commit.
• Update the 6.1-dev directory on dist.plone.org, and gather files to put there:
  • You can use tox -c release/tox.ini -p auto to create or copy some files in release/dist. But you need to create some of those files first.
  • Create a unified changelog based on the previous release: bin/manage changelog --start=6.1.0a1 > release/changelog.txt. Remove the uninteresting top lines. You may want to link to the Zope changelog with a specific tag.
  • Create a file release/RELEASE-NOTES.md. It may be enough to look through the changelog and copy interesting changes.
  • Get the versions.cfg file and any other versions files from coredev.
  • Create a release/constraints.txt file from this. The above tox command generates this. Note: at some point I expect the constraints file to become leading, and we may need to generate a versions.cfg file instead.
  • Copy (rsync) these files to the pending release directory. (We used to copy packages as well, but we do not do this for Plone 6 anymore.)
• Write a post on community.plone.org announcing a pending/soft release. See example. In the 6.1 alpha/beta/rc stage, we can skip pending releases and just make a real release.
• Wait for feedback, preferably at most a few days. As said, in the alpha/beta/rc stage, we can skip this.

Final release, Docker

• Make final release of Products.CMFPlone to PyPI, update versions.cfg.
• In release/6.1-dev branch update changelog, release notes, constraints.txt.
• Create tag of the release/6.1-dev branch, e.g. 6.1.0a1, and push to GitHub.
• Make final release directory on dist.plone.org, with versions, requirements, constraints, changelog, release notes.
• Update the "-latest" links on dist.plone.org, e.g. ln -sfT 6.1.0a1 6.1-latest
• Notify Érico Andrei and/or Fred van Dijk in the #release-team Discord channel that there is a new release. They will create Docker images. Examples of changes: README.md and version.txt.

Announcements

You probably want to wait until the Docker images are there, but don't wait long.

• Create release page on https://plone.org/download/releases
• Send mail to Marketing Team so they can prepare announcements.
• Update the https://plone.org/security/hotfixes/ page in the configuration control panel. This is done in the configuration registry: plone.securitysupport, plone.versions, plone.activemaintenance. You could ask the security team.
• Publish release page on plone.org.
• Update the release schedule: note the new release, and say when the next release in this series is expected.
• Edit the link on https://plone.org/download.
• Announce on community.plone.org.
• In plone/documentation's conf.py, update PLONE_BACKEND_PATCH_VERSION and PLONE_BACKEND_MINOR_VERSION as needed. Ask Steve Piercy or do it yourself. Here is a sample PR.
• Ask Philip Bauer and/or Fred van Dijk to update the demo sites. Here is a sample PR.

[mauritsvanrees]

I want to create a first alpha of Plone 6.1 next week.
@tisto @petschki @thet @erral Could you make releases for your packages please?

• Monday 22 / Tuesday 23: release packages
• Wednesday 24 / Thursday 25: release 6.1.0a1.

In the alpha/beta/rc stage of Plone 6.0 I did not do "pending" releases for people to test for a few days. I want to do the same for 6.1: no pending release, but immediately an alpha/beta/rc.

[mauritsvanrees]

@sneridagh Which Volto version should I advertise in the release notes for Plone 6.1.0a1? 17.11.2 or 18.0.0-alpha.7? (I will check what the latest tag is before creating the release notes.)

I would be inclined to say latest 17. We can always switch to 18 later in the release cycle, if it seems likely that there will be a final Volto 18 release before 6.1.0 is final. I am hoping for a final 6.1 release in March, maybe April. Always a bit hard to predict.

[erral]

@mauritsvanrees I haven't checked the main branches lately. I will do a coredev pull and check whether there are a lot of message changes and thus if we deserve a new branch in plone.app.locales.

[sneridagh]

@mauritsvanrees We said that it would be latest stable whenever the release happens. So, let's use latest stable (17.11.2), if when the final release happens there's a 18 final, then let's go with that.

[petschki]

I've released

plone.staticresources==2.2.0a4
plonetheme.barceloneta==3.2.0a3
@plone/plonetheme-barceloneta-base==3.2.0-alpha.3

and updated coredev version files. There will also be a mosaic release this week for the 6.1-ecosystem.

[erral]

@mauritsvanrees I haven't checked the main branches lately. I will do a coredev pull and check whether there are a lot of message changes and thus if we deserve a new branch in plone.app.locales.

I have downloaded the coredev for 6.1, run the i18n extraction script and I have just seen 4 or 5 additions in CMFEditions' po files which are also added in 6.0. So I am not going to create a new branch in plone.app.locales for the moment. If we see in the future that is needed, we will do it then.

[erral]

Released plone.app.locales = 6.0.19

[mauritsvanrees]

I have made releases for plone.restapi, plone.rest and plone.volto.

[mauritsvanrees]

I have released 6.1.0a1:
https://dist.plone.org/release/6.1.0a1/

Waiting for Docker images before announcing it more widely.

[mauritsvanrees]

Docker image for the backend is not ready yet, but I don't want to wait longer, so I officially announced it:

• https://community.plone.org/t/first-alpha-of-plone-6-1-released/18746?u=mauritsvanrees
• https://plone.org/download/releases/6.1.0a1