Developer Area/Release Instructions

This document details the procedure to follow when building a release for general download. Other documents related to this one include the Version Numbering policy and the Release Policy.

For the purposes of these instructions, assume we are releasing version X.Y.Z of Mahara.

Also see these pages for more instructions:

• Major release
• Release candidate

Pre-requisites:

• You must have a valid GPG key and you need to add it to Launchpad (see https://launchpad.net/~username/+editpgpkeys).
• You must have lp-upload-project installed:

 apt-get install lptools

• Configure lptools to write public information on Launchpad on your behalf:

manage-credentials create -c ubuntu-dev-tools -l 2

(Note: This won't work for Ubuntus after Maverick, as manage-credentials appears to have gone away. You will need to install lptools to proceed with the script usage.)

1. Make sure your mahara-scripts checkout is up to date

You need to have an up-to-date version of the mahara-scripts repo in order to get the latest copy of the release script. That's the only repo you need to have since the release script will clone the gitorious repo all by itself.

2. Run the first part of the release script

Using the script you got in the previous step, run the first step of it like this:

./release.sh X.Y.Z X.Y_STABLE

This will create tarballs as well as a changelog and some release notes to paste into Launchpad. It will also spit out another script (release-X.Y.Z-cleanup.sh) to be run later.

Note that the repos that will be pushed back to gitorious are live in your /tmp. Do not reboot your machine in the middle of doing a release or you will have to run through the release script again.

3. Testing

Here is the testing that needs to be done using the tarballs you generated in the last step:

1. install the Selenium firefox plugin if you don't already have it
2. untar the tar that release.sh generated somewhere and make sure you can connect to it and login as admin
3. in a mahara repository, check the right branch out (X.Y_STABLE for X.Y.Z)
4. in that repository, cd test/selenium/ && ./generate-testsuites.py
5. in firefox: Tools | Selenium IDE
6. in Selenium: File | Open Test Suite
7. open test/selenium/TestSuite.html
8. set the Base URL to where you can connect to that Mahara site
9. drop the db and create a new blank one (the selenium tests start by running the install)
10. hit the "play entire test suite" green "play" button

Note: Avoid using firefox while selenium runs, it steals tabs and gets confused. Note: Firebug can also confuse selenium, so it's best to turn it off while running the suite.

The test suite should be run both on MySQL and Postgres. Then run these manual upgrade tests (no need to run the Selenium test suite):

1. install a fresh X.Y.Z-1 site, then upgrade to Z.Y.Z on Postgres and quickly check that everything works (create a portfolio, a blog with a blog post, a group with a forum and a forum post)
2. repeat that last step on MySQL

4. Create the release on Launchpad

At https://launchpad.net/mahara/+milestone/X.Y.Z

Click on "create release" and give it today's date.

Leave "Keep the X.Y.Z milestone active." unchecked.

Paste in the release notes and the changelog that were generated for you by the release script. You can remove the "bump version number" commits from the changelog since they aren't very useful :)

5. Sign and upload the tarballs

Run the next part of the release script, i.e. the script that was spit out by the release script.

./release-X.Y.Z-cleanup.sh

When prompted by lp-project-upload for release notes and a changelog, don't enter anything there since you've already put them on Launchpad in the last step. You will be prompted twice for each file upload (6 times in total).

6. Update bugs on the tracker

On Launchpad, click on all of the bugs targetted for that milestone and move them from "Fix committed" to "Fix released".

7. Put the release notes on the wiki page

This is just adding a link to the right page on Launchpad, we no longer have a duplicate copy of the release notes on the wiki.

Release notes page

8. Quick announcements

• Topic on the mahara.org forums
• Change the topic of #mahara
• Put a note on Twitter and Identica.
• Update freecode to report the new release

You may need to ask a previous release manager to get access to some of these accounts.

9. Security advisories

If this release includes security fixes, then publish the advisories on the security forum.

10. Update the news at http://mahara.org/

Posting in the news forum does this.

Include links to the security advisories and a link to the download page on Launchpad.

Now is a good time to notify translators about changed strings, if this is a stable release. I tend to do this with a forum post in the Translations forum.

11. Update the demo.mahara.org install (currently Catalyst hosted)

demo.mahara.org is deployed using Catalyst's standard internal hosting deployment scripts.

Subpages

• Creating a GPG key
• Release script