RELEASE_GUIDELINES.md

Release Guidelines for the CaosDB Octave 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.
• CHANGELOG.md is up-to-date.
• DEPENDENCIES.md is 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:

   1. Rename the Unreleased section to the new version.
   2. Remove empty subsections.

3. Check all general prerequisites.

4. Check version numbers and dates:

   1. In doc/conf.py.
   2. In DESCRIPTION.
   3. Date in doc/Generate_Octave_Doc.m.

5. Merge the release branch into the main branch.

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

7. Create release in Gitlab:

   1. On Releases, click "New release"
   2. Choose tag, type release title (same as tag), no milestone, possibly short release note, no manual assets are necessary, possibly link to documentation.
      1. Release title: v0.2.0 (replace by actual release)
      2. Milestones: None
      3. Release date: today
      4. Release notes (replace release in link, copy from changelog file):

Changelog

See full changelog.

Changed

(Copy & paste from CHANGELOG.md)

      5. Assets:
        - URL: https://docs.indiscale.com/caosdb-octavelib/
        - Link title: Documentation
        - Type: Other

8. Delete the release branch.

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

10. After the merge of main to dev, start a new development version by increasing at least the
    `MICRO` version.
    1. Re-add an *Unreleased* section to the CHANGELOG.md, with all subsections.
    2. Increase version number in `doc/conf.py` and `DESCRIPTION`

## Upstream package ##

These steps are necessary for creating the upstream package at Octave's repository:

1. Update Octave-package repository on github.com:
    1. In `packages/caosdb.yaml`, create new version release:
       1. Set `id`: same as tag
       2. Set `date`: today
       3. Set `url`: Use the asset from the Gitlab release, for example [this url](https://gitlab.indiscale.com/caosdb/src/caosdb-octavelib/-/archive/v0.0.1/caosdb-octavelib-v0.0.1.tar.gz).
       4. Set `sha256`: Download the asset and run `sha256` on it:  
          `curl https://gitlab.indiscale.com/[...].tar.bz2 | sha256sum`
    2. Create pull request at https://github.com/gnu-octave/packages .