status-mobile/doc/RELEASE_GUIDE.md

Description

This document explains some of the steps that are involved in releases.

Release process

Coordination

All the coordination is done in the #release channel on discord.

Release readiness can be tracked by watching an appropriate milestone at milestones section in github.

When release is building you can check the progress in a testrail. Ask @churik for access if you don't have it

Preparing branches

Special branches should be created at the start of a release process. That can be done manually or with the script

Prepare branches with the script

You can use the script to cut a release branch. No arguments needed, the new release version will be deducted automatically:

scripts/cut-release.sh

Upon script call two branches will be created:

• release/a.b.x
• chore/update-release-to-$version

The first one is the main release branch. All bugfixes should be cherry-picked from develop to it. Jenkins treats that branch specially and prepares release builds from it.

The second branch only updates the VERSION file and all you need to do is to merge it to develop. If you have the gh command installed, cut-release script will automatically create a PR for this.

Prepare branches manually

Create a branch

First, we need to create a release branch cut from develop. The name of the branch should be release/a.b.x where x is actually x, not a variable, and a and b are the MAJOR and MINOR version of the app.

For example, valid branch names are:

release/1.12.x or release/3.12.x

Update version

We need to update the VERSION file to reflect the release we want to build.

Building

Jenkins will automatically build this branch and create release candidates. Those will go through the QA process and the QA team will let us know when tested successfully.

Bugfixes before an app is released

Because both status-react and status-go might have newer commits that we don't want to include, bug fixes should be applied separately to develop and the release branch. The best workflow is to send a PR to develop, get it merged, and the cherry-pick on the release branch.

It is a release manager's responsibility to cherry-pick bugfix from develop to release branch. In order to do this, you should be a part of a release group on github. Contact @jakubgs to be added.

If cherry-picking not practical for some reason (i.e develop has diverged significantly from release) other workflows are possible.

To change status-go, a similar workflow applies. First checkout the tag used in status-go-version.json of release branch.

git checkout v0.62.3

Create a branch on status-go named: release/vx.y.z+hotfix.w where (make sure branch name is not the same as the tag)

x is the MAJOR version y is the MINOR version z is the PATCH version w is the HOTFIX version

For example valid names are:

release/v0.62.3+hotfix.2 release/v1.3.4+hotfix.4

Once the branch is ready to use and tested successfully, tag the branch:

git tag v0.62.3+hotfix.2

Push the branch and then the tag to origin: git push --set-upstream origin release/v0.62.3+hotfix.2 git push origin v0.62.3+hotfix.2

Switch to status-react release branch, and cherry pick the commit you need.

Once that's done, update the status-react release branch with the new tag:

make shell

scripts/update-status-go.sh v0.62.3+hotfix.2

And commit and push the changes

Hotfix process

The hotfix process is basically identical to the workflow of a bugfix:

1. Add the changes on status-react
2. Make sure you use a hotfix branch for status-go (unless we are happy to release from develop)
3. Update the VERSION in status-react