New Release Procedure

Checklist: What to do for a new Arches release

1. Handle Arches Release Notes
2. Update Documentation as Needed
3. Publish a New Version of the Docs

Handle Arches Release Notes

Find the release notes document, and add a link to them in the docs where appropriate (in the master branch).

Update Documentation as Needed

Read through the release notes and either:

1. make small changes to the master branch of the docs for breaking changes (say, a command line argument has changed), or
2. make a ticket to mark changes that need to be made to the documentation for the new version

Publish a New Version of the Docs

When a new major or minor release of Arches is tagged (going from 6.5 to 7.0, or 7.3 to 7.4), a new numbered branch must be made in this repo. Read the Docs will automatically pick up this branch and begin building it as the /stable version of the docs.

For a micro release (e.g. 7.3.1 to 7.3.2), the version number in conf.py should be updated in the corresponding branch (7.3 in this case) but no new branch should be created.

Here's how to create the new major/minor release branch.

1. checkout and pull latest master commits

    git checkout master && git pull
   

2. create new numbered branch for the release

    git checkout -b 7.4
   

3. change the docs version number in conf.py and commit

    git commit -s docs/conf.py -m "update version number"
   

4. push this new branch to the repo

    git push --set-upstream origin 7.4