All items below are to be completed by the owner of the given release.
- [ ] Create release branch
- [ ] Assign release candidate tag to the release branch HEAD. e.g. v0.30.0-rc.0
- [ ] Generate and edit releases notes in CHANGELOG.md
- [ ]_End user impact_: Summarize impact of changes on Status end users (can be a comment in this issue).
- [ ]**Validate release candidate**
- [ ] Automated testing
- [ ] Ensures js-waku tests are green against release candidate
- [ ] Ask Vac-QA and Vac-DST to perform available tests against release candidate
- [ ]**On Waku fleets**
- [ ] Lock `waku.test` fleet to release candidate version
- [ ] Continuously stress `waku.test` fleet for a week (e.g. from `wakudev`)
- [ ] Search _Kibana_ logs from the previous month (since last release was deployed), for possible crashes or errors in `waku.test` and `waku.sandbox`.
- Most relevant logs are `(fleet: "waku.test" OR fleet: "waku.sandbox") AND message: "SIGSEGV"`
- [ ] Run release candidate with `waku-simulator`, ensure that nodes connected to each other
- [ ] Unlock `waku.test` to resume auto-deployment of latest `master` commit
- [ ]**On Status fleet**
- [ ] Deploy release candidate to `status.staging`
- [ ] Perform [sanity check](https://www.notion.so/How-to-test-Nwaku-on-Status-12c6e4b9bf06420ca868bd199129b425) and log results as comments in this issue.
- [ ] Connect 2 instances to `status.staging` fleet, one in relay mode, the other one in light client.
- [ ] 1:1 Chats with each other
- [ ] Send and receive messages in a community
- [ ] Close one instance, send messages with second instance, reopen first instance and confirm messages sent while offline are retrieved from store
- [ ] Inform other (Waku and Status) CCs to point their instance to `status.staging` for a few days. Ping Status colleagues from their Discord server or Status community (not blocking point.)