This document is a draft

How to do a pre-release

1. File a ticket (e.g. #4290)
2. Check  buildbot to make sure all supported platforms are green (wait for pending builds if necessary).
3. Make a branch (e.g. mkbranch Twisted release-4290)
4. Run ./bin/admin/change-versions XX.YY.ZZpreN
5. Commit the changes made by change-versions
6. Run ./bin/admin/build-news .
7. Commit the changes made by build-news
8. Make a temporary directory for the tarballs to live in (e.g. mkdir /tmp/twisted-release)
9. Run ./bin/admin/build-tarballs . /tmp/twisted-release/
10. Upload the tarballs to a public website
11. Announce the pre-release on
    1. the twisted-python mailing list
    2. on IRC in the #twisted topic
    3. in a blog post, ideally labs.twistedmatrix.com

Open questions

• How do I decide the version number?

• Do we need to commit the changes from build-news for pre-releases?
  • They leave the pre-release version in the NEWS files when doing pre-releases
  • But build-tarballs won't work with uncommitted changes

• How do we manage the case where there are untested builds in trunk?

Notes

• Test change-versions with pre-releases
• There should be a template for release announcements
• There are missing scripts:
  • for uploading pre-release tarballs
  • for signing tarballs
  • for uploading release tarballs