Release process

Prerequisites

  • In order to promote a Snap release from edge to stable, you need publishing access, which you can get from Colin Watson.

How to create a new release

  • create an MP with a release commit, with updated version number in setup.cfg and updated version number and release date in NEWS.rst, following the semver recommendations

  • once the MP has been merged to the main branch, a Launchpad recipe automatically builds and publishes Snap packages to the edge channel

  • once the Snaps have been published, update your local Snap installation

    snap refresh --edge lpci

  • in order to make sure nothing is broken, run

    lpci -v

  • go to the Releases page of the Snap store to promote the release from edge to stable

    • click on the cog icon next to latest/edge

    • select Promote/close

    • click on Promote to: latest/stable

    • finally, hit the Save button in the top right corner to apply the changes

Some additional information

  • It is best practice to use dev0 version’s suffix defining a new development version into setup.cfg after a release, so when building that version for testing, it does not show the old version number. Once we want to release, we remove the suffix, to indicate that this is no longer a development version.

  • members of the Launchpad team can use the Request builds button on that recipe if they need updated builds urgently

  • lpci currently only makes use of stable and edge, though this may change in future if necessary

  • most users, as well as default CI builds in Launchpad, should use the stable channel rather than the auto-built edge channel