Zulip server release checklist

This document has reminders of things one might forget to do when preparing a new release.

A week before the release

• For a major release (e.g. 4.0):
• Upgrade all Python dependencies in requirements to latest upstream versions so they can burn in (use pip list --outdated).
• Upload strings to Transifex using push-translations. Post a Transifex Announcement notifying translators that we're approaching a release.
• Merge draft updates to the changelog with changes since the last release. While doing so, take notes on things that might need follow-up work or documentation before we can happily advertise them in a release blog post.
• Inspect all TODO/compatibility comments for whether we can remove any backwards-compatibility code in this release.
• Create a burn-down list of issues that need to be fixed before we can release, and make sure all of them are being worked on.
• Draft the release blog post (a.k.a. the release notes) in Paper. In it, list the important changes in the release, from most to least notable.

Final release preparation

• Update the Paper blog post draft with any new commits.
• Except minor releases: Download updated translation strings from Transifex and commit them.
• Use build-release-tarball to generate a release tarball.
• Test the new tarball extensively, both new install and upgrade from last release, on both Bionic and Focal.
• Repeat until release is ready.
• Send around the Paper blog post draft for review.
• Move the blog post draft to Ghost. (For a draft in Dropbox Paper, use "··· > Export > Markdown" to get a pretty good markup conversion.) Proofread the post, especially for formatting. Tag the post with "Release announcements" in Ghost.

Executing the release

• Create the release commit, on master (for major releases) or on the release branch (for minor releases):
• Copy the Markdown release notes for the release into docs/overview/changelog.md.
• Except minor releases: Adjust the changelog.md heading to have the stable release series boilerplate.
• Update ZULIP_VERSION and LATEST_RELEASE_VERSION in version.py.
• Except minor releases: Update API_FEATURE_LEVEL to a feature level for the final release, and document a reserved range.
• Tag that commit with an unsigned Git tag named the release number.
• Use build-release-tarball to generate a final release tarball.
• Push the tag and release commit.
• Upload the tarball using tools/upload-release.
• Post the release by editing the latest tag on GitHub; use the text from changelog.md for the release notes.

Note: This will trigger the GitHub action for updating DigitalOcean one-click app image. The action uses the latest release tarball published on download.zulip.com for creating the image. * Update the Docker image and do a release of that. * Update the image of DigitalOcean one click app using Fabric and publish it to DO marketplace. * Publish the blog post; check the box to "send by email." * Email zulip-announce, post to #announce, and send a tweet.

Post-release

• Following a major release (e.g. 4.0):
• Create a release branch (e.g. 4.x).
• On the release branch, update ZULIP_VERSION in version.py to the present release with a +git suffix, e.g. 4.0+git.
• On master, update ZULIP_VERSION to the future major release with a -dev+git suffix, e.g. 5.0-dev+git. Make a Git tag for this update commit with a -dev suffix, e.g. 5.0-dev. Push the tag to both zulip.git and zulip-internal.git to get a correct version number for future Cloud deployments.
• Consider removing a few old releases from ReadTheDocs; we keep about two years of back-versions.
• Following a minor release (e.g. 3.2), on the release branch:
• Update ZULIP_VERSION to the present release with a +git suffix, e.g. 3.2+git.
• Update LATEST_RELEASE_VERSION with the released version.
• Cherry-pick the changelog changes back to master.