nickel/RELEASING.md

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

About the version numbers

Some of the crates in the Nickel workspace are libraries and 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.

Other crates carry the version number of the Nickel language. These are

• nickel-lang-cli
• nickel-lang-lsp
• pyckel

Finally, update the version number in doc/manual/introduction.md.

Prepare

1. Branch out from master to a dedicated branch X.Y.Z-release: git checkout -b X.Y.Z-release

2. Bump the overall version number in Cargo.toml to X.Y.Z. This will be automatically propagated to the CLI, the Nickel language server and Pyckel.

3. Bump the version number of the other crates in the workspace:

   • core/Cargo.toml
   • lsp/lsp-harness/Cargo.toml
   • utils/Cargo.toml
   • wasm-repl/Cargo.toml Afterwards, also adjust the version numbers in Cargo.toml. For example, in

      nickel-lang-core = { version = "0.1", path = "./core", default-features = false }
   

   adjust the version 0.1 to reflect the new version number.

4. Make sure that everything builds: run nix flake check at the root of the repository.

5. Add the changelog since the last release in RELEASES.md. GitHub is able to automatically generate release notes: refer to this guide. While the output needs to be reworked, it's a useful starting point. Commit and push your changes.

6. 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. We advise to first save the previous state in a local branch:

   git checkout stable
   git branch stable-local-save
   

   If anything goes wrong, you can reset stable to its previous state:

   git checkout stable
   git reset --hard stable-local-save
   git push --force-with-lease
   

   Update the stable branch:

   git checkout stable
   git reset --hard X.Y.Z-release`
   git push --force-with-lease
   

Release on crates.io

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.

   Commit those changes temporarily to please cargo, but they will be dropped later. Do not push.

2. 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, and have a crates.io API key saved locally on your machine (normally via cargo login). For help with this, contact the Nickel maintainers.

3. 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 <crate-to-publish>

4. Ditch the potential changes made to the cargo manifests at step 1. by dropping the corresponding commit.

Release on GitHub

1. Do the release on GitHub, 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 repository.

2. Branch out from master and update the Nickel input:

   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!