ngIRCd - Next Generation IRC Server http://ngircd.barton.de/ (c)2001-2021 Alexander Barton and Contributors. ngIRCd is free software and published under the terms of the GNU General Public License. -- HowToRelease.txt -- I. Introduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Creating a new ngIRCd release requires a few steps to follow: the source tree must be in a releasable state (be up to date, include all required patches, be tested on as many platforms as possible), a name for the new release must be chosen, and all the files describing the release must be updated accordingly. Since ngIRCd release 13 (2009-12-25) we use "simple" release numbers for major releases (e.g. "13", "17", "42", ...) introducing new features and sub-releases for bug fixes only (e.g. "14.1", "22.3", ...). When creating pre-releases or release candidates, please use the tilde ("~") character to separate the "postfix" in the release number (e.g. "17~rc2" or "123.4~rc6"). The release/version number of a build is automatically generated using the GIT "describe" command, see git-describe(1). Therefore it is required that a new release is tagged in the GIT tree and that the configure script is up-to-date (e.g. using ./autogen.sh) before generating the archives! II. How to prepare a new ngIRCd release? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ a) Make sure you have working versions of GNU autoconf and GNU automake installed on the system you use for generating the release: as of May 2020 we are using GNU autoconf 2.69 and GNU automake 1.11.6 which seem to work just fine. NOTE: new releases of GNU automake DO NOT work, as they lack support for the "ansi2knr" wrapper and "de-ANSI-fication" support! b) Make sure the source tree is in a releasable state ;-) - Are all branches & patches merged? Check GitHub issues, pull requests and milestones! - Run as many tests as you can! - Is the AUTHORS file up to date? This command may be helpful: "( grep '>$' AUTHORS; git shortlog -se | cut -c8- ) | grep -Ev \ '(alex@barton.de|fw@strlen.de)' | LC_ALL=de_DE.UTF-8 sort -u" c) Update the files describing the new release: - ChangeLog - NEWS d) Update the version numbers in the following files: - contrib/de.barton.ngircd.metainfo.xml - contrib/ngircd.spec e) Generate a new Debian change log entry in the following file, e.g. using the Debian "dch" tool of the "devscripts" package: - contrib/Debian/changelog f) Commit the above changes to GIT: "git add", "git commit" g) Create a new signed GIT tag for the new release: "git tag -s". Please note that we don't use the tilde ("~") here, instead use a simple hyphen ("-") as delimiter: e.g. "rel-16" "rel-17-rc1", "rel-18-pre2", ... h) Run "./autogen.sh" to update the ./configure script with the correct release number (autogenerated using "git describe", see above). i) Run "./configure" to rebuild all generated Makefiles. j) Run "make distcheck" (and "make dist-tarZ dist-xz") to generate all of the distribution archives. k) Sign the distribution archive(s) using GnuPG: "gpg -b " l) Upload and distribute the newly generated ngIRCd release archive(s) and GnuPG signatures (to the website, its mirrors, and GitHub). m) Update the ngIRCd website and its mirrors! n) Write an announcement to the mailing list, Twitter, ... o) Relax :-)