PointReleaseProcess
This is an incomplete DRAFT.
To be carried out by: nominated stable release manager, with support from the [https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-sru stable release updates] and [https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-release release teams]
Goals:
- Refresh hardware support in LTS releases for carefully-selected hardware
- Roll up accumulated stable updates into updated images to reduce download requirements for new deployments
- Maintain stability of existing installations
Planning stages, for LTS point releases:
- Discuss candidates for new or improved hardware support with affected parties, including the Canonical support team (via Steve George) and the Ubuntu kernel team.
- Establish a hit-list of bugs to fix in the point release.
- In concert with affected developers, triage the hit-list for feasibility.
- Discuss the possibility of a Canonical press release for the point release with Gerry Carr.
- Liaise with IS, QA, and certification to arrange for testing resources.
Process stable release updates [:StableReleaseUpdates:as normal]. Once an acceptable number of bugs is believed to be fixed, start building test CD images:
If the kernel or associated modules has been changed, upload debian-installer after all the binaries are in place. If the ABI changed, make sure to take account of this throughout debian-installer/build/config/ and in the installer seed for all flavours being built.
Change cdimage/bin/make-web-indices, cdimage/bin/publish-release, and debian-cd/CONF.sh to use the new release version number.
Change cdimage/bin/run-germinate and debian-cd/CONF.sh to build from -proposed temporarily. If live CDs need to be built, also modify cdimage/bin/buildlive.
- Build CD images (which will be published and smoke-test in some convenient environment to check for obvious failures.
- Contact IS, QA, and/or certification as appropriate to request testing.
Once testing is verified to be complete, release images as final, and move the previous images to old-releases.ubuntu.com. TODO much more detail here
TODO:
- actual release process
lsb_release et al?
- Anything else?