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How to release

This page tries to capture the process we go through to make a new beta release of ROS 2.

We usually don’t branch before a release but “freeze” the used branch. During the testing phase make sure that no unwanted changes are being committed to that branch. Iteratively test either using the artifacts produced by the packaging jobs or from-source builds and make necessary changes. Once the current state is ready to be released, follow these steps:

  • Get a fresh copy of all repositories using the master ros2.repos file.

    • curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros2/ros2/master/ros2.repos | vcs import ./src

  • Update the version number in (most) packages (excluding the ones which have their own numbering scheme). Also update the version numbers in all python packages that have a setup.py.

    • Commit and push these changes: vcs custom ./src --args commit -m "beta N" -a, vcs custom ./src --args push

  • Create a .repos file with the exact commit hashes you have checked out locally:

    • vcs export --exact ./src > hashes.repos

  • Tag (most) repositories using vcstool.

    • For some repositories we are not creating ROS 2 specific tags but use the hashes instead:

      • ament/osrf_pycommon

      • eProsima/Fast-CDR

      • eProsima/Fast-RTPS

      • ros/class_loader

      • ros/console_bridge

      • Remove the above repositories for now: rm -fr src/ament/osrf_pycommon src/eProsima src/ros

    • Note that for this step to work without requiring lots of password typing, you either need a ~/.netrc file with your credentials, or you need to change the GitHub URLs in the .repos file to use ssh instead of https.

    • Create the release tag:

      • vcs custom ./src --args tag release-betaN (adjust the tag name appropriately).

      • If we ever have something other than git repositories we’ll need to use the --git and --hg (for example) arguments separately.

    • Update the release-latest tag on all repositories:

      • vcs custom ./src --args tag -f release-latest

    • Push tags (using force to overwrite existing latest tags):

      • vcs custom ./src --args push --tags -f

  • Create new .repos file:

    • cp hashes.repos tags.repos

    • Edit tags.repos and replace the version attribute for all repositories (except the ones skipped before) with release-betaN (adjust the tag name appropriately).

  • Repeat the tagging and .repos file generation for the turtlebot2_demo.repos file.

    • At beta3, only the turtlebot2_demo repo had packages that needed their version bumped, and no repos used a fixed hash instead of the release tag.

  • Run some packaging job using this new .repos file.

    • First upload tags.repos somewhere (e.g. gist.github.com).

    • Then trigger a packaging job for each platform and use the url of the hosted .repos file in the CI_ROS2_REPOS_URL field.

    • Rename each artifact file (an archive file) as ros2-beta<beta-number>-package-<platform><rmw-impl>-<opt-arch>.<ext>.

      • E.g. ros2-beta2-package-linux-fastrtps-x86_64.tar.bz2

  • Create a tag on the ros2/ros2 repository called release-betaN with the new .repos file:

    • Clone ros2/ros2 to the master branch.

    • Replace the ros2.repos file’s content with that of the tags.repos file created above.

    • Commit it with a message like the tag name, e.g. release-betaN (adjust the tag name appropriately).

    • Tag it with git tag release-betaN (adjust the tag name appropriately) and git tag -f release-latest push both with git push --tags -f.

  • Create a new release in the Releases section of ros2/ros2 using this new tag:

    • Use the title ROS 2 Beta N release (matching the style of previous releases).

  • Upload the renamed artifacts to the Release on GitHub using the web interface:

  • Create an overview page for the beta release, e.g. https://github.com/ros2/ros2_documentation/Beta2-Overview

  • Update the releases page to point to it: https://github.com/ros2/ros2_documentation/Releases

  • Update the Features page if appropriate.

  • Update the link on the home page: https://github.com/ros2/ros2_documentation/README

  • Run the documentation generation and upload and link the results from https://docs.ros2.org/

  • Draft and send an announcement to discourse about that release.