helix-mods/docs/releases.md
Michael Davis 22a051408a
Update release docs (#11182)
These haven't been updated in a little while. The original plan was to
update the version (in `Cargo.toml`) after a release to the next
planned release date but the way we release now is to update the version
as a part of the release process (just before tagging). Typically this
is all taken care of in the CHANGELOG-updating branch along with the
other documentation changes like the appdata file. The workflow now is
basically just to merge the changelog/release branch, pull, tag and push.
2024-07-16 12:31:29 +09:00

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## Checklist
Helix releases are versioned in the Calendar Versioning scheme:
`YY.0M(.MICRO)`, for example, `22.05` for May of 2022, or in a patch release,
`22.05.1`. In these instructions we'll use `<tag>` as a placeholder for the tag
being published.
* Merge the PR with the release updates. That branch should:
* Update the version:
* Update the `workspace.package.version` key in `Cargo.toml`. Cargo only accepts
SemVer versions so a CalVer version of `22.07` for example must be formatted
as `22.7.0`. Patch/bugfix releases should increment the SemVer patch number. A
patch release for 22.07 would be `22.7.1`.
* Run `cargo check` and commit the resulting change to `Cargo.lock`
* Add changelog notes to `CHANGELOG.md`
* Add new `<release>` entry in `contrib/Helix.appdata.xml` with release information according to the [AppStream spec](https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/sect-Metadata-Releases.html)
* Tag and push
* Switch to master and pull
* `git tag -s -m "<tag>" -a <tag> && git push` (note the `-s` which signs the tag)
* Wait for the Release CI to finish
* It will automatically turn the git tag into a GitHub release when it uploads artifacts
* Edit the new release
* Use `<tag>` as the title
* Link to the changelog and release notes
* Merge the release notes PR
* Download the macos and linux binaries and update the `sha256`s in the [homebrew formula]
* Use `sha256sum` on the downloaded `.tar.xz` files to determine the hash
* Link to the release notes in this-week-in-rust
* [Example PR](https://github.com/rust-lang/this-week-in-rust/pull/3300)
* Post to reddit
* [Example post](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/uzp5ze/helix_editor_2205_released/)
[homebrew formula]: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/master/Formula/h/helix.rb
## Changelog Curation
The changelog is currently created manually by reading through commits in the
log since the last release. GitHub's compare view is a nice way to approach
this. For example, when creating the 22.07 release notes, this compare link
may be used
```
https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/compare/22.05...master
```
Either side of the triple-dot may be replaced with an exact revision, so if
you wish to incrementally compile the changelog, you can tackle a weeks worth
or so, record the revision where you stopped, and use that as a starting point
next week:
```
https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/compare/7706a4a0d8b67b943c31d0c5f7b00d357b5d838d...master
```
A work-in-progress commit for a changelog might look like
[this example](https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/commit/831adfd4c709ca16b248799bfef19698d5175e55).
Not every PR or commit needs a blurb in the changelog. Each release section
tends to have a blurb that links to a GitHub comparison between release
versions for convenience:
> As usual, the following is a summary of each of the changes since the last
> release. For the full log, check out the git log.
Typically, small changes like dependencies or documentation updates, refactors,
or meta changes like GitHub Actions work are left out.