ESciDoc Release Lifecycle

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Phases of a release[edit]

  • Tag the code in the SCM with a version name
  • Deploy the current documentation to the webserver
  • Deploy the build artifacts to the nexus server
  • Modify the version number in the poms

Identification of a release[edit]

The identification of a release is called version number. In the eSciDoc project these version numbers consist of three decimal numbers separated by dots. If a new release is made, one of these numbers will be incremented.

If the version is a candidate version between two releases, a SNAPSHOT identifier will be appended at the end. So e.g 2.0.18-SNAPSHOT means, the next release version will be 2.0.18. The table below indicates the dependency between software changes and this identification.


X. X. X. -SNAPSHOT

- Milestone changes

- Interface changes

- Greater design changes

- Smaller design changes

- Bugfixes

this indicates it's an intermediate snapshot version


Now if the new version identifier is specified, a release can be performed.

Perform a release[edit]

Before you want to make a release be sure to have the appropriate rights for uploading to the nexus server. Without these rights, a release can not be deployed and fails! Currently there's no way to check the user roles in nexus by a standard user. So you have to ask a nexus administrator, if you have the appropriate rights to deploy releases.

After the rights are validated, you have to decide whether you want to do a release of the complete project or just a single module release.

Project release[edit]

A project release means you want to release everything in the project, every submodule and the parent pom.xml (this is the pom.xml in the root folder of the project). Even submodules which haven't changed are being released. This procedure makes sense, if a lot of submodules have changed and you don't want to release every module one-by-one. If the parent pom.xml has changed you always have to do a project release, since every submodule changes its dependency.

Single module release[edit]

A single module release means you want to release just a single module of a project. This is normally the case, if there are changes just in one or two submodules of a project. Remember that in this release form, you have to take care of the correct inter-project module dependencies by yourself.

For the release itself, there are two possibilities. A graphically assisted release run. Then you would choose Continuum. Or if you prefer a release on the local workstation, do a command line release.

It makes sense to checkout a sources to special release directory in order to avoid an interception with the local svn instance.

Release with Continuum[edit]

At the moment Continuum has some problems with a maven plugin affecting the release mechanism, so the graphical release is not available right now.

Command line release on local workstation[edit]

  • Preparation for scp to work
You need an account with sufficient rights on the machine the website will be deployed (=target machine). Make sure the target machine is contained in the known_host file of your local workstation. This can be achieved by log in successfully via ssh.
On your local workstation generate an rsa key without passphrase using ssh_keygen. Export the public key to the authorized_keys of the target machine. See ssh. Location of the ssh files on both machines is ~/..ssh
Check if there's the following section in your ~/.m2/settings.xml
  ...
  <server>
    <id>website</id>
    <!-- ssh username -->
    <username></username>
    <passPhrase></passPhrase>
    <filePermissions>666</filePermissions>
    <directoryPermissions>777</directoryPermissions>
  </server>
  ...
  • Changes
The changes properties define the behavior of the announcement plugin.
This plugin is responsible to send an email to a mail address if a new release is done. It is also responsible to download all the jira bugs and present them on the project webpage. That's why, you have to provide
your jira account. ;)
The private key to upload the documentation is in the /home/jboss folder. Copy the file id_rsa file to your local machine and set the path to this file in the settings.xml.
Next you have to edit the changes.xml file for each module you want to release. This file resides in src/changes/changes.xml in the root folder. You might see something like this:
<document>
  <properties>
    <title>Common services project</title>
    <author email="endres@mpdl.mpg.de">Thomas Endres</author>
  </properties>
  <body>
    <release version="1.0.0" date="2008-02-21" description="Initial release">
      <action dev="tendres" type="update">
        Lots of changes for the maven build environment.
      </action>
    </release>
     <release version="1.0.1" date="2008-03-07" description="Release of all modules">
    </release>
    <release version="1.0.2-SNAPSHOT" date="2008-03-11" description="current development">
    <action dev="wfrank" type="update">
        Applied changes required for new framework release(version 0.9.1 build 224)
      </action>
    </release>
  </body>
</document>
As you can see there's a section with a snapshot version number. These are the recently finished development actions on the module. These actions haven't been released yet. Also remember that there are still modules
which doesn't have this snapshot section yet. If it misses, please add it. ;)
To release the above module would now involve the following steps:
    • First change the snapshot version
...
 <release version="1.0.2-SNAPSHOT" date="2008-03-11" description="current development">
...
to a standard version
...
 <release version="1.0.2" date="2008-04-07" description="Single module release">
...
    • Then open a new snapshot section for further development actions
 <release version="1.0.3-SNAPSHOT" date="2008-04-07" description="Current development">
    </release>
    • Checkin the modified file
  • Update and commit pubman online download page (svn, target url) with the release specific comments and download links, if needed.
  • Create a new release directory on your local machine and checkout the sources concerned into this directory. Go to the project root folder, if you want to release the whole project; otherwise to the modules root folder). Now type
mvn release:prepare -DpreparationGoals="clean install"
Maven proposes a release version for every module concerned. If a module has been modified, increase the version according the above section. Related modules (e.g cone, cone_presentation, cone_ear) should get the same version. The sources get tagged with a label containing the release version. This information is stored locally in the release.properties file in the directory where the release preparation has been called. Having finished the preparation successfully maven increases the versions in the pom.xml files for the next developement version (e.g if the release version is 1.1.5 the following developement version will be 1.1.6-SNAPHOT).
  • If you want to discard the release, enter
mvn release:rollback
This will remove the new tag, and rollback the version changes in the pom.xml' files.
  • If the prepare was successful, the release can be performed. Do this by typing:
mvn release:perform
The system now creates all the needed artifacts (jars, javadoc, etc.) for the release and starts the tests. If these were okay, the artifacts will be transfered to Nexus.
  • To publish the snapshot version, you should now do a
mvn clean deploy
This makes the new snapshot version available, so that no developer should have some 'unable to download artifact' errors. ;)

Further information on the release mechanism can be found on the Homepage of the Maven release plugin.

Further steps to do after a release[edit]

  • Update the source tree in your development environment. Check the version numbers and the versions of the dependencies in the pom.xml files to be increased to the new developement version (should end with -SNAPSHOT).
  • Copy over the released ear to the qa-machine for testing
  • Write an email to escidoc-dev to inform that a new release has been made
  • Clean up the old SNAPSHOT ear on the dev-machine
  • Open a new release in JIRA and close the open release, which you just have released

Publish a release[edit]

  • Copy documentation from escidoc1.escidoc.mpg.de:/srv/www/staging/projects to /escidoc1.escidoc.mpg.de:/srv/www/00_default/projects
  • Copy ear to the appropriate live instance and check the configuration

Deal with errors[edit]

  • If a release fails and the system states that the tag you want to create is already in the svn repository, you have to delete it manually directly in the repository:
    • Open an svn browsing tools like 'kdesvn' for Linux or the 'repo-browser' (right click in SVN Tortoise) for Windows
--Makarenko 16:22, 3 March 2010 (UTC): In kdesvn: File->Open->URL to the repo. (e.g. https://subversion.mpdl.mpg.de/repos/pubman)
    • Simply delete the tag you want to create newly
    • Be careful to not delete the wrong tag!!!!!
  • If you get a strange svn error just do a
svn up