Voting on releasing RC artificats as Final

Hi All

For the 3.0 release of POI, we followed the advice on voting on
artificats, the not the state of the tree. So, we used our ant script to
produce RC artificats, signed them, and placed them on people.apache.org
for review.

After the vote, we renamed the files from -RC4- to -FINAL-, tweaked the
filenames inside the .md5 files, and copied into /dist/.

Two snags though:
* we had to re-generate the maven pom, and re-sign it, as that holds the
release version in it, which changed
* we forgot that the .tar.gz and .zip files all have poi-3.0-rc4 as their
base directory name, since the directory name is generated dynamically
in build.xml

What do other people do about this for their releases, when voting on
artificats? Do you do each build as if it was -FINAL (so that gets embeded
into all the directory names etc), then rename the artificats for voting,
or something else?

Thanks
Nick

Re: Voting on releasing RC artificats as Final

For commons transaction I did exactly that.

Create/sign the RC as if it was the final release, but only put it on
temporary storage without notifying anyone external.

IMHO a RC is not meant to check for remaining bugs, but rather to see
if the distro looks ok, installs, etc.

That means the RC is never actually released to the users. This is
what betas or milestones are for.

Disclaimer: Certainly not official. This is my personal way of making releases.

Cheers

Oliver

2007/5/21, Nick Burch :
> Hi All
>
> For the 3.0 release of POI, we followed the advice on voting on
> artificats, the not the state of the tree. So, we used our ant script to
> produce RC artificats, signed them, and placed them on people.apache.org
> for review.
>
> After the vote, we renamed the files from -RC4- to -FINAL-, tweaked the
> filenames inside the .md5 files, and copied into /dist/.
>
> Two snags though:
> * we had to re-generate the maven pom, and re-sign it, as that holds the
> release version in it, which changed
> * we forgot that the .tar.gz and .zip files all have poi-3.0-rc4 as their
> base directory name, since the directory name is generated dynamically
> in build.xml
>
> What do other people do about this for their releases, when voting on
> artificats? Do you do each build as if it was -FINAL (so that gets embeded
> into all the directory names etc), then rename the artificats for voting,
> or something else?
>
> Thanks
> Nick
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: general-help@jakarta.apache.org
>
>

Re: Voting on releasing RC artificats as Final

Nick Burch wrote:
> What do other people do about this for their releases, when voting on
> artificats? Do you do each build as if it was -FINAL (so that gets
> embeded into all the directory names etc), then rename the artificats
> for voting, or something else?

For Tomcat, every release candidate gets a new version number. We
upload the RC to tomcat.a.o/dev/dist and test it for a few days. If we
find a show stopper, we delete the uploaded RC and start again (it is
still tagged in svn if we ever need to go back).

If no major issues are found, we vote on it (Alpha/Beta/Stable) and
after the vote the files are copied to www.a.o/dist and an
announcement sent out.

HTH,

Mark

Re: Voting on releasing RC artificats as Final

On 5/21/07, Nick Burch wrote:
> Hi All
>
> For the 3.0 release of POI, we followed the advice on voting on
> artificats, the not the state of the tree. So, we used our ant script to
> produce RC artificats, signed them, and placed them on people.apache.org
> for review.
>
> After the vote, we renamed the files from -RC4- to -FINAL-, tweaked the
> filenames inside the .md5 files, and copied into /dist/.
>
> Two snags though:
> * we had to re-generate the maven pom, and re-sign it, as that holds the
> release version in it, which changed
> * we forgot that the .tar.gz and .zip files all have poi-3.0-rc4 as their
> base directory name, since the directory name is generated dynamically
> in build.xml
>
> What do other people do about this for their releases, when voting on
> artificats? Do you do each build as if it was -FINAL (so that gets embeded
> into all the directory names etc), then rename the artificats for voting,
> or something else?

Don't your jars contain the version number too?

The most recent release types I've done are the type where you create
the exact release and put it in your ~login where it's voted on. I
like this because it makes the actual release extremely easy. The
biggest downsides are a) someone might be idiotic and use a random jar
from a ~login and b) if you have the release date in there somewhere
you have to use the day the vote ends.

I don't like the Tomcat/Struts/HTTP Server style of bumping the
version each time, but only really because they abuse their numbering
schemes. ie) 1.3.5, 1.3.8 etc rather than 1.3.5build1, 1.3.5build4.
The general principle is sound and if your community can do the
testing to be able to decide on a GA, then it's good.

Hen

Re: Voting on releasing RC artificats as Final

On Mon, 21 May 2007, Henri Yandell wrote:
> Don't your jars contain the version number too?

Yeah, everything seems to :/

> The most recent release types I've done are the type where you create
> the exact release and put it in your ~login where it's voted on. I like
> this because it makes the actual release extremely easy. The biggest
> downsides are a) someone might be idiotic and use a random jar from a
> ~login and b) if you have the release date in there somewhere you have
> to use the day the vote ends.

That makes sense as a plan. While the rc has -final- in the artificat
names, you can put it in a directory called -rc, and add a readme. Since
you're probably just going to include the url to the files in the vote
email to -dev (who ought to know what it means), it strikes me it ought to
be fine.

I've updated the poi release guide to follow your method, so we'll have to
see how it works for 3.0.1!

Thanks
Nick