This page defines the Ubuland Projects release process. At the release of each version this process should be followed as closely as possible by the release manager.

Current Ubuland release manager: DavidFutcher

Current Ubuland Senior members: DavidFutcher, Saj0577

Soft deadlines for each Ubuland release will be defined on the Ubuland project page at http://www.launchpad.net/ubuland

Deadline - 1 week

One week before the soft deadline the current state of the projects code should be looked at to see how close to completing the defined targets for the release it is. If it is close to meeting its targets (the release will have met >= 75% of them) and it will be possible to get the code into a workable form then a bzr branch should be setup with by a member of Ubuland Senior (~ubuland-senior/ubuland/<release-name>-release) and a copy of the current source code will be pulled into it. From now on this branch is in soft freeze. Only patches that work towards implementing bug fixes, small updates to uncompleted specs and patches to increase the stability of the code should be uploaded. Security fixes should always be uploaded. It is recommended that patches are tested on a testing server before being uploaded to the release branch to avoid nasty surprises on release night.

If the project is unlikely to meet a large amount of its targets or will not be in a stable state within a week, the release should be postponed and this step repeated until the code is ready for release.

From now on the release branch should go into harder and harder freezes every few days:

Release - 3 days: Hard freeze, only security and important bug fixes. Sometimes stability patches.

Release - 1 days: Uber freeze, only critical security and bug fixes. Cosmetic text changes (welcome text, contact details)

Release Day

Run a final bzr pull in your release branch directory to grab any latest patches, copy directory to <release-name>-final, remove the .bzr directory and tar it up. This is the release tarball. Looks after it!

Copy it onto the server, extract and install (you are release manager, you should know how to do this). Register a new release in the 'stable' series on Launchpad and describe the new features in this release.

In the Changelog field we want a very descriptive changelog written in this style:

ubuland (release-number~release-tag) trunk; urgency=low

• New xxxxx (LP: #bug_no)

• -- Release Manager <release managers email> output of date -R

This is the changelog for Ubuland Alpha Two:

ubuland (0.2-0~alpha-two) trunk; urgency=low

• New theme (LP: #237102)
• New control panel frontend

• New admin -> user messaging system

• New Contact Us page with email form (LP: #237096)
• Sidebar stats panel finished and tied into new control panel frontend
• Users require correct permissions to get into parts of the site (LP: #246025, 236907)
• New logout confirmation page (LP: #236907)
• Username length restrictions lessened to 2 characters (LP: #237340)

• -- David Futcher <bobbocanfly@gmail.com> Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:48:26 +0100

Add the final tar.gz as a project file. Now create an announcement on teh main Launchoad project page announcing the latest features and wehre the new release can be found (the live running version obviously). Next write a similar announcement on the project mailing list and remember to say thanks to the developers. Finally announce this on UbuntuForums and on your blog (tell everyone else in ##ubuland to do the same).

Finally announce the release properly by announcing it in ##ubuland and changing the topic to include new release details.

Well done, you just released a new version of Ubuland.