This release guide is largely inspired from Hipparchus Release Guide. It lists the steps that have been used in the past to release a new version of Orekit. When in doubt ask the experts: Sébastien Dinot sebastien.dinot@csgroup.eu for website questions and Luc Maisonobe luc.maisonobe@csgroup.eu for everything else.
0802AB8C87B0B1AEC1C1C5871550FDBD6375C33BIf you need help with either ask on the development section of the Orekit forum.
Once you have a SonaType OSS account, the corresponding credentials must be set in the servers section of the $HOME/.m2/settings.xml file, using an id of ossrh:
<servers>
<server>
<id>ossrh</id>
<username>the user name to connect to the OSS site</username>
<password>the encrypted password</password>
</server>
</servers>
Use mvn -ep to generate an encrypted password.
Graphviz (dot) 2.39 and above put too much blank space in the generated diagrams. The bug has not yet been fixed in graphviz, so we have to use 2.38 or earlier. The version in CentOS 7 works, the version in Ubuntu 18.04 does not.
Before anything, check on the continuous integration site that everything is fine on develop branch:
If not, fix the warnings and errors first!
It is also necessary to check on the Gitlab CI/CD that everything is fine on develop branch (i.e. all stages are passed).
Release will be performed on a dedicated branch, not directly on master or develop branch. So a new branch must be created as follows and used for everything else:
git branch release-X.Y git checkout release-X.Y
Release is a good opportunity to update the maven plugin versions. They are all gathered at one place, in a set of properties in orekit/pom.xml:
<!-- Project specific plugin versions --> <orekit.spotbugs-maven-plugin.version>3.1.11</orekit.spotbugs-maven-plugin.version> <orekit.jacoco-maven-plugin.version>0.8.3</orekit.jacoco-maven-plugin.version> <orekit.maven-assembly-plugin.version>3.1.1</orekit.maven-assembly-plugin.version> ...
You can find the latest version of the plugins using the search feature at http://search.maven.org/#search. The properties name all follow the pattern orekit.some-plugin-name.version, the plugin name should be used in the web form to check for available versions.
Beware that in some cases, the latest version cannot be used due to incompatibilities. For example when a plugin was not recently updated and conflicts appear with newer versions of its dependencies.
Beware also that some plugins use configuration files that may need update too. This is typically the case with maven-checkstyle-plugin and spotbugs-maven-plugin. The /checkstyle.xml and /spotbugs-exclude-filter.xml files may need to be checked.
Before committing these changes, you have to check that everything works. So run the following command:
mvn clean LANG=C mvn -Prelease site
If something goes wrong, either fix it by changing the plugin configuration or roll back to an earlier version of the plugin.
Browse the generated site starting at page target/site/index.html and check that everything is rendered properly.
When everything runs fine and the generated site is OK, then you can commit the changes:
git add orekit/pom.xml orekit/checkstyle.xml orekit/spotbugs-exclude-filter.xml git commit -m "Updated maven plugins versions."
Finalize the file /src/changes/changes.xml file.
The release date and description, which are often only set to TBD during development, must be set to appropriate values. The release date at this step is only a guess one or two weeks in the future, in order to take into account the 5 days release vote delay.
Replace the TBD description with a text describing the version released: state if it is a minor or major version, list the major features introduced by the version etc. (see examples in descriptions of former versions).
Commit the changes.xml file.
git add src/changes/changes.xml git commit -m "Updated changes.xml for official release."
Several files must be updated to take into account the new version:
| file name | usage | required update |
|---|---|---|
build.xml |
building file for Ant users | Update project version number. Check all dependencies’ versions are consistent with pom.xml |
src/site/markdown/index.md |
site home page | Update the text about the latest available version, including important changes from changes.xml |
src/site/markdown/downloads.md.vm |
downloads links | Declare the new versions, don’t forget the date |
src/site/markdown/faq.md |
FAQ | Add line to the table of dependencies. |
Make sure the ant build works: ant clean clean-lib jar javadoc.
Once the files have been updated, commit the changes:
git add build.xml src/site/markdown/*.md git commit -m "Updated documentation for the release."
The pom.xml file contains the version number of the library. During development, this version number has the form X.Y-SNAPSHOT. For release, the -SNAPSHOT part must be removed.
Commit the change:
git add pom.xml git commit -m "Dropped -SNAPSHOT in version number for official release."
Depending the JDK version (Oracle, OpenJDK, etc), some JavaDoc warnings can be present. Make sure there is no JavaDoc warnings by running the following command:
mvn javadoc:javadoc
If possible, run the above command with different JDK versions.
When all previous steps have been performed, the local git repository holds the final state of the sources and build files for the release. It must be tagged and the tag must be signed. Note that before the vote is finished, the tag can only signed with a -RCx suffix to denote Release Candidate. The final tag without the -RCx suffix will be put once the vote succeeds, on the same commit (which will therefore have two tags). Tagging and signing is done using the following command, with -RCn replaced with the Release Candidate number:
git tag X.Y-RCn -s -u 0802AB8C87B0B1AEC1C1C5871550FDBD6375C33B -m "Release Candidate n for version X.Y."
The tag should be verified using command:
git tag -v X.Y-RCn
When the tag is ready, the branch and the tag must be pushed to Gitlab so everyone can review it:
git push --tags origin release-X.Y
The site is generated locally using:
mvn clean LANG=C mvn site
The official site is automatically updated on the hosting platform when work is merged into branches develop, release-* or master.
When these settings have been set up, generating the artifacts is done by running the following commands:
mvn deploy -DskipStagingRepositoryClose=true -Prelease
During the generation, maven will trigger gpg which will ask the user for the pass phrase to access the signing key. Maven didn’t prompt for me, so I had to add -Dgpg.passphrase=[passphrase]
Once the commands ends, log into the SonaType OSS site https://oss.sonatype.org/ and check the staging repository contains the expected artifacts with associated signatures and checksums:
The signature and checksum files have similar names with added extensions .asc, .md5 and .sha1.
Sometimes, the deployment to Sonatype OSS site also adds files with double extension .asc.md5 and .asc.sha1, which are in fact checksum files on a signature file and serve no purpose and can be deleted.
Remove orekit-X.Y.source-jar* since they are duplicates of the orekit-X.Y-sources.jar* artifacts. (We can’t figure out how to make maven stop producing these duplicate artifacts). Then click the “Close” button.
Everything is now ready so the developers and PMC can vote for the release. Create a post in the Orekit development category of the forum with a subject line of the form:
[VOTE] Releasing Orekit X.Y from release candidate n
and content of the form:
This is a VOTE in order to release version X.Y of the Orekit library. Version X.Y is a maintenance release. Highlights in the X.Y release are: - feature 1 description ... - feature n description The release candidate n can be found on the GitLab repository as tag X.Y-RCn in the release-X.Y branch: <https://gitlab.orekit.org/orekit/orekit/tree/X.Y-RCn> The release notes can be read here: <https://test.orekit.org/site-orekit-X.Y/changes-report.html> Maven artifacts are available at <https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/orgorekit-xxxx/>. The votes will be tallied in 120 hours for now, on 20yy-mm-ddThh:mm:00Z (this is UTC time).
You should also ping PMC members so they are aware of the vote. Their vote is essential for a release as per project governance.
If the vote fails, the maven artifacts must be removed from OSS site by dropping the repository and non-maven artifacts must be removed from the staging directory in the Orekit site. Then a new release candidate must be created, with a new number, a new tag and new artifacts. Another vote is needed for this new release candidate. So make the necessary changes and then start from the “Tag and sign the git repository” step.
When the vote for a release candidate succeeds, follow the steps below to publish the release.
As the vote passed, a final signed tag must be added to the succeeding release candidate, verified and pushed:
git tag X.Y -s -u 0802AB8C87B0B1AEC1C1C5871550FDBD6375C33B -m "Version X.Y." git tag -v X.Y git push --tags
Merge the release branch into the master branch to include any changes made.
git checkout master git merge --no-ff release-X.Y
Then commit and push.
Merge the master branch into the develop branch to include any changes made.
git checkout develop git merge --no-ff master
Then updated the version numbers to prepare for the next development cycle. Edit pom.xml version to SNAPSHOT and make space in the /src/changes/changes.xml file for new changes. Then commit and push.
The maven artifacts must be published using OSS site to release the repository. Select the Orekit repository in “Staging Repositories” and click the “Release” button in Nexus Repository Manager.
Navigate to Projects > Orekit > Repository > Tags. Find the X.Y tag and click the edit button to enter release notes. Use the path in the Nexus repository to set the artifacts in the release notes.
Navigate to Projects > Orekit > Deployments > Releases and make sure it looks nice.
To enhance the visibility of the project, a mirror is maintained on Github. The releases created on Gitlab are not automatically pushed on this mirror. They have to be declared manually to make visible the vitality of Orekit.
Github automically adds two assets (zip and tarball archives of the tagged source code)
Several edits need to be made to the Orekit website after the vote.
Edit overview.html with the new Hipparchus version. Don’t forget to update the overview.png image with the new dependencies.
Create a new post for the release in _post/.
Run:
jekyll serve
and make sure the website looks nice. View it on http://localhost:4000/
In Gitlab, navigate to Projects > Orekit > Issues > Milestones. Click “Close Milestone” for the line corresponding to the release X.Y.
The last step is to announce the release by creating a post in the Orekit announcements category of the forum with a subject line of the form:
Orekit X.Y released
and content of the form:
The Orekit team is pleased to announce the release of Orekit version X.Y. This is a minor/major version, including both new features and bug fixes. The main changes are: - feature 1 description ... - feature n description This version depends on Hipparchus X'.Y' For complete release notes please see: https://www.orekit.org/site-orekit-X.Y/changes-report.html The maven artifacts are available in maven central. The source and binaries can be retrieved from the forge releases page: https://gitlab.orekit.org/orekit/orekit/-/releases