opentelemetry-java/RELEASING.md

OpenTelemetry Release Process

Starting the Release

Open the release build workflow in your browser here.

You will see a button that says "Run workflow". Press the button, enter the version number you want to release in the input field that pops up, and then press "Run workflow".

This triggers the release process, which builds the artifacts, updates the README with the new version numbers, commits the change to the README, publishes the artifacts, and creates and pushes a git tag with the version number.

Announcement

Once the GitHub workflow completes, go to Github release page, press Draft a new release to write release notes about the new release. If there is already a draft release notes, just point it at the created tag.

You can use git log upstream/v$MAJOR.$((MINOR-1)).x..upstream/v$MAJOR.$MINOR.x --graph --first-parent or the Github compare tool to view a summary of all commits since last release as a reference.

In addition, you can refer to CHANGELOG.md for a list of major changes since last release.

Update release versions in documentations and CHANGELOG files

After releasing is done, you need to update CHANGELOG.md.

Create a PR to mark the new release in CHANGELOG.md on master branch.

Patch Release

All patch releases should include only bug-fixes, and must avoid adding/modifying the public APIs.

Open the patch release build workflow in your browser here.

You will see a button that says "Run workflow". Press the button, enter the version number you want to release in the input field for version that pops up and the commits you want to cherrypick for the patch as a comma-separated list. Then, press "Run workflow".

If the commits cannot be cleanly applied to the release branch, for example because it has diverged too much from main, then the workflow will fail before building. In this case, you will need to prepare the release branch manually.

This example will assume patching into release branch v1.2.x from a git repository with remotes named origin and upstream.

$ git remote -v
origin	git@github.com:username/opentelemetry-java.git (fetch)
origin	git@github.com:username/opentelemetry-java.git (push)
upstream	git@github.com:open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java.git (fetch)
upstream	git@github.com:open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java.git (push)

First, checkout the release branch

git fetch upstream v1.2.x
git checkout upstream/v1.2.x

Apply cherrypicks manually and commit. It is ok to apply multiple cherrypicks in a single commit. Use a commit message such as "Manual cherrypick for commits commithash1, commithash2".

After commiting the change, push to your fork's branch.

git push origin v1.2.x

Create a PR to have code review and merge this into upstream's release branch. As this was not applied automatically, we need to do code review to make sure the manual cherrypick is correct.

After it is merged, Run the patch release workflow again, but leave the commits input field blank. The release will be made with the current state of the release branch, which is what you prepared above.

Release candidates

Release candidate artifacts are released using the same process described above. The version schema for release candidates isv1.2.3-RC$, where $ denotes a release candidate version, e.g. v1.2.3-RC1.

Credentials

The following credentials are required for publishing (and automatically set in Circle CI):

• BINTRAY_USER and BINTRAY_KEY: Bintray username and API Key. See this.

• SONATYPE_USER and SONATYPE_KEY: Sonatype username and password.

Releasing from the local setup

Releasing from the local setup can be done providing the previously mentioned four credential values, i.e. BINTRAY_KEY, BINTRAY_USER, SONATYPE_USER and SONATYPE_KEY:

export BINTRAY_USER=my_bintray_user
export BINTRAY_KEY=my_user_api_key
export SONATYPE_USER=my_maven_user
export SONATYPE_KEY=my_maven_password
export RELEASE_VERSION=2.4.5 # Set version you want to release
./gradlew final -Prelease.version=${RELEASE_VERSION}