RELEASE_GUIDELINES.md

Release Guidelines for the CaosDB Python Client Library

This document specifies release guidelines in addition to the general release guidelines of the CaosDB Project (RELEASE_GUIDELINES.md)

General Prerequisites

• All tests are passing.
• FEATURES.md is up-to-date and a public API is being declared in that document.
• CHANGELOG.md is up-to-date.
• dependencies in setup.cfg are up-to-date.

Steps

1. Create a release branch from the dev branch. This prevents further changes to the code base and a never ending release process. Naming: release-<VERSION>

2. Update CHANGELOG.md

3. Check all general prerequisites.

4. Update the version:

   • version variables in src/doc/conf.py
   • Version in setup.cfg: Check the MAJOR, MINOR, MICRO, PRE variables and set ISRELEASED to True. Use the possibility to issue pre-release versions for testing.
   • CITATION.cff (update version and date)

5. Merge the release branch into the main branch.

6. Tag the latest commit of the main branch with v<VERSION>.

7. Delete the release branch.

8. Remove possibly existing ./dist directory with old release.

9. Publish the release by executing ./release.sh with uploads the caosdb module to the Python Package Index pypi.org.

10. Merge the main branch back into the dev branch.

11. After the merge of main to dev, start a new development version by increasing at least the micro version in setup.cfg and preparing CHANGELOG.md.

12. Create releases on gitlab.com and gitlab.indiscale.com that contain (at least) the most recent section of the CHANGELOG as the description and link to the PyPi package.