root/trunk/midgard/release_howto.txt

Midgard Release HOWTO
====================
2004-03-26 Henri Bergius (henri.bergius@iki.fi) 
        and Piotr Pokora (pp@infoglob.pl)

2007-06-09 Alexander Bokovoy <ab@samba.org>

This document explains the steps needed for making a Midgard CMS 
release.

Subversion branch management
----------------------------
If you want to checkout only specific parts of Midgard subversion
repository then use following instruction:

svn co --username=USERNAME -N https://svn.midgard-project.org/midgard
cd midgard
svn -N up trunk
svn -N up branches
svn up trunk/midgard
svn up branches/branch-1-8

Version Numbers
---------------

Midgard's version numbers are formatted with three-level pattern.
First number is the Midgard generation, second number is major
release and third number is the minor release.

Generation is either 1 or 2, depending on releasing Midgard 1.x
or Midgard2. Major release number is changed when important new
features or API changes are introduced to the system. Minor
release numbers are used for smaller incremental upgrades.

For marketing purposes major Midgard releases can also be referred
to using only two levels of the version string. For example,
Midgard 1.7 instead of Midgard 1.7.1.

In addition to version number, the version string can also include
release status information like "alpha", "beta" or "rc". The 
formatting of the version string should be PHP version_compare() 
compatible and follow the PEAR recommendations:
http://pear.php.net/group/docs/20040226-vn.php

Package Creation
----------------

* Make sure all sources are up to date and all optional patches 
  are ported to particular branch. 

* Create new tag for release.

* Run makedist with the version number
  $ ./makedist 2.0.0
  makedist will also change the version string in midgard-core and
  copy needed data packages from Midgard website to midgard-data

* Upload packages to http://www.midgard-project.org/download/
  The article should use the major version (for example 2.0)
  as the URL name

* Ensure that binary packages get generated and uploaded by their
  maintainers:
  Piotr Pokora generates Debian packages
  Jyrki Wahlstedt generates DarwinPorts (OSX) packages
  Binary packages files may be also generated by opensuse build system.

* Add the new version number to Midgard bug tracker configuration
* Change status of resolved bugs. 

* Do version bump at least in core's configure.in file.

Announcements
-------------

The release announcement should be made available both as HTML and
plain text. It should contain the following information:

* Release name and number (Midgard 1.7.1 "Plug and Pray" released)

* Release location and date (Lodz, September 7th 2005)

* Explanation (The Midgard Project has released ...)

* Bullet list of major new features from both Midgard Framework
  and Midgard CMS (MidCOM, Aegir, etc.)

* Descriptions of the biggest improvements in few paragraphs

* What is Midgard: basic description or marketing text and URL
  to www.midgard-project.org

* Planned for next release: features, release date estimate

* Download URLs for source and binaries

* URLs for "Getting Started" guide and bug reporting

* Contact information for release manager, spokesman and mailing lists

Email release announcement to following addresses:
  dev@midgard-project.org
  user@midgard-project.org
  lwn@lwn.net
  general@oscom.org

Submit release announcement by web to following locations:
  http://www.midgard-project.org/updates/
  http://freshmeat.net/projects/midgard
  http://freshmeat.net/projects/midcom
  http://www.cmsinfo.org/submission.php3
  http://www.newsforge.com/submit.pl
  http://www.content-wire.com/contact
  http://linuxtoday.com/contribute.php3
  http://apache.slashdot.org/submit.pl
  https://www.entwickler.com/ssl/php_forms/pme_general.php?check=1
  http://cmsmatrix.org/matrix/news?func=add&class=WebGUI::Asset::Post::Thread
  http://jaiku.com/channel/midgard
  http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=27554626815

Also update the entry on Midgard in:
  http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19132

Add the release name together with linked explanation to:
  http://www.midgard-project.org/midcom-permalink-d528f84c55ef2299a96c8e9e3ccb5252

Major releases
--------------

When making a major Midgard release (i.e. 2.0 or 1.7.0), the following
additional actions must be done:

* Create a release information sub-site to http://www.m-p.org/midgard/<version>
  - It should contain at least screenshots, feature list, architecture
    diagram, and a more verbose and nicely formatted version of the
    announcement
  - This sub-site can be created already early on in the release cycle
    and kept up-to-date, as the final feature set of the release is clarified
  - It is important to note both developer-oriented and end-user features

* When the major release has been done, the midcom-template configuration
  snippet on the Midgard site must be altered to affect redirects:
  - /sitegroup-config/midcom-template/config:
    $GLOBALS['midcom_site']['midgard_version']='1.7';