hledger/RELEASING.md

Releasing

Guidance for release managers and maintainers.

Terminology:

• “main” = the master branch, might get renamed in future.
• “release” = a release branch, such as 1.22.

Changelogs

Always maintain changelogs in main.

Apply CONTRIBUTING.md#commit-messages rules when commiting, pushing, or reviewing/merging pull requests. tools/commitlint helps with this, run locally and in CI.

Use ./Shake changelogs to update them from recent commit messages.

Minor release

Checklist:

• create release branch if none
  git branch RELEASEBRANCH RELEASETAG
git branch 1.22-branch 1.22

• update main changelogs
  

  • ./Shake changelogs
  • do at least basic editing - drop things, move things
  • ./Shake changelogs -c

• review changes so far, estimate which packages will be released

• add “unreleased” minor release heading in main changelogs, immediately above previous release heading

  # LATESTHASH
  
  ...CHANGES...
  
  # X.Y.1 unreleased  <- new heading
  
  # X.Y YYYY-MM-DD
  

• cherry pick changes to release

  1. always update main changelogs first
  2. cherry pick commits
  3. move corresponding change items under minor release heading in main changelogs

• finalise release

  • add date to minor release heading in main changelogs
  • copy the minor release section from main changelogs to release changelogs