# Release process for Nickel You're ready to release a new version of Nickel - congrats! This document explains how to do so step by step while keeping the various crates and dependent repositories (such as the website) in a consistent state. ## Steps to make a release ### Releasing script **IMPORTANT**: Since the 1.4 release, `scripts/release.sh` takes care of bumping versions numbers, updating local cross-dependencies, creating a clean release branch, updating the stable branch and publishing to crates.io. The covered steps are still described below for your information, but you shouldn't need to actually perform them manually. You'll still have to do the GitHub release, redeploy nickel-lang.org manually, and backport changes to `master`, which are all described below as well. #### Script requirements - A relatively recent bash (> 4.3) - git - tomlq - cargo - You will need to be signed in to `crates.io` with a GitHub account that is part of the [Nickel Core team](https://github.com/orgs/nickel-lang/teams/core), and have a `crates.io` API key saved locally on your machine (normally via `cargo login`). For help with this, contact the Nickel maintainers. Once `master` is in a releasable state, start the script from the root of the `nickel` git repository with an argument that is either `major`, `minor` or `patch`, indicating how to bump the version number. For example: ```console $./release.sh minor ++ Nickel release script ++ ++ This script will: [..] ``` ### About the version numbers Some of the crates in the Nickel workspace are libraries which are not versioned according to the version number of the language itself. These are - `nickel-lang-core` - `nickel-lang-utils` - `lsp-harness` - `nickel-wasm-repl` Their version numbers take the form `0.W.U` and their public APIs are not considered stable. Consequently we bump their versions to `0.(W+1).0` on every release (if needed). Other crates carry the version number of the Nickel language. These are - `nickel-lang-cli` - `nickel-lang-lsp` - `pyckel` ### Prepare **IMPORTANT**: this section is covered by the `release.sh` script, and is only kept for information purpose. Usually, you shouldn't have to perform the following steps manually. 1. Branch out from `master` to a dedicated branch `X.Y.Z-release`: `git checkout -b X.Y.Z-release` 2. Bump the overall workspace version number in `Cargo.toml` to `X.Y.Z`. This will be automatically propagated to the CLI, the Nickel language server and Pyckel. 3. Update the current version number mentioned in `doc/manual/introduction.md` with the new one set in step 2. Grep for the previous version number in the various README files, as the latest version is sometimes mentioned, and update if needed. 4. Bump the version number of `core` in `core/Cargo.toml` and `wasm-repl/Cargo.toml`. The two versions must always be the same. Bump the version of the other crates in the workspace **if needed** (usually, it's safer to always bump the version of `core` because it's modified all the time without special care about its public API, but the following crates are often left untouched): - `lsp/lsp-harness/Cargo.toml` - `utils/Cargo.toml` Afterwards, also adjust the version numbers of the dependencies in `Cargo.toml`. For example, in ```toml nickel-lang-core = { version = "0.1", path = "./core", default-features = false } ``` adjust the version `0.1` to reflect the new version number. 5. Make sure that everything builds: run `nix flake check` at the root of the repository. 6. Add the changelog since the last release in RELEASES.md. GitHub is able to automatically generate release notes: refer to [this guide](https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/releasing-projects-on-github/automatically-generated-release-notes). While the output needs to be reworked, it's a useful starting point. Commit and push your changes. 7. Set the `stable` branch to point to your new `X.Y.Z-release`. Because the `stable` branch usually contains specific fixes, or cherry-picked commits, we'll have to force push. First save the previous state in a local branch: ```console git checkout stable git branch stable-local-save ``` Update the `stable` branch: ```console git checkout stable git reset --hard X.Y.Z-release` git push --force-with-lease ``` If anything goes wrong, you can reset `stable` to its previous state: ```console git checkout stable git reset --hard stable-local-save git push --force-with-lease ``` ### Release on crates.io **IMPORTANT**: this section is covered by the `release.sh` script, and is only kept for information purpose. Usually, you shouldn't have to perform the following steps manually. 1. Remove references to `nickel-lang-utils` from the `[dev-dependencies]` sections of the crates to be published: `./core/Cargo.toml` for `nickel-lang-core`, `./cli/Cargo.toml` for `nickel-lang-cli` and `./lsp/nls/Cargo.toml` for `nickel-lang-lsp` (work-around for [cargo:#4242](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/4242). 2. Remove references to `lsp-harness` from the `[dev-dependencies]` sections of the `./lsp/nls/Cargo.toml` (workaround for the same issue as 1.). 3. For all crates to be published, remove the `format` feature from the list of features (in the `[features]` section of their `Cargo.toml` file), remove all dependencies referenced by `format` (of the form `dep:xxx`) from the list of dependencies of the crate, and finally, remove `"format"` from the list of the default features. We have to do this because Topiary isn't published on `crates.io` yet, but `cargo` insists that we only depend on published crates. Thus, we have to abandon the format feature - which requires Topiary - for the version published to `crates.io`. 4. **Commit the changes made in 1., 2. and 3. temporarily to please cargo, but they will be dropped later. Do not push**. 5. Check that a dry run of `cargo publish` succeeds on the crates to be published (`nickel-lang-core`, `nickel-lang-cli` and `nickel-lang-lsp`): - `cargo publish -p nickel-lang-core --dry-run` - `cargo publish -p nickel-lang-cli --dry-run` - `cargo publish -p nickel-lang-lsp --dry-run` For this to work, you will need to be signed in to `crates.io` with a GitHub account that is part of the [Nickel Core team](https://github.com/orgs/nickel-lang/teams/core), and have a `crates.io` API key saved locally on your machine (normally via `cargo login`). For help with this, contact the Nickel maintainers. 6. Actually release `nickel-lang-core`, `nickel-lang-cli` and `nickel-lang-lsp` (in that order, as the cli and the lsp depend on core) on crates.io: `cargo publish -p ` 7. Ditch the potential changes made to the cargo manifests at steps 1., 2. and 3. by dropping the corresponding commit ### Release on GitHub 1. Do the [release on GitHub](https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/releasing-projects-on-github/managing-releases-in-a-repository), Make sure that you set `X.Y.Z-release` as the target branch and have GitHub create the `X.Y.Z` tag on release. 2. Verify that the "Upload release artifacts" GitHub action is getting triggered and completes successfully, uploading a static Nickel binary and a Docker image for both x86-64 and arm64 Linux platforms. ### Redeploy nickel-lang.org with the new release 1. Checkout the [nickel-lang](https://github.com/tweag/nickel-lang.org/) repository. 2. Branch out from `master` and update the Nickel input: ```console git checkout -b release/X.Y.Z nix flake lock --update-input nickel git add flake.lock git commit -m "Update to Nickel vX.Y.Z" git push -u origin @ ``` Open a pull request on the nickel-lang repository. Once the CI is green and the PR is merged, nickel-lang.org will be automatically redeployed with the new version of Nickel used for the playground and the documentation. ### Port changes to master 1. Cherry-pick the following commits into separate PRs to `master`: - Bumping the version numbers done in Preparation 2. - Updating release notes done in Preparation 5. - Fixes that you made locally for `nix flake check` or other commands. 2. Profit!