Releases

Creating a Release

Creating a release should only be done by the release manager! Release branches are created from the develop branch. Decide on a release number for the next release, using semver conventions. For example, if the current release is 1.0.0 and the changes in this release are minor, the new release number would be 1.0.1.

• Make sure your local machine has an up-to-date version of the develop branch:

git checkout develop
git pull origin develop

• Create a new release branch from develop with the name release-<release#>:

git checkout -b release-0.1.0 develop

• Update the release number in the application. This typically entails updating the package.json file version properties, and perhaps other locations where the release number might appear.

• Commit the version number change:

git add -A
git commit -m "Bumped version number to 0.1.0"

• Run the application (locally and/or in a deployment environment) and make any fixes necessary. These should be very minor changes - significant changes should be made by creating a feature release based on the develop branch as described above. When the application is ready for release...
• Merge the release branch into main:

git checkout main
git pull origin main
git merge --no-ff release-1.0.0
git tag -a 0.1.0 -m "Release version 0.1.0"
git push origin HEAD
git push origin 0.1.0

At present, Heroku is configured to detect the commit to main and automatically deploy the application to production. You should navigate to https://la.foodoasis.net after giving Heroku time to deploy and verify that the application runs (About 5 minutes), and any visible release # has been incremented.

The release is now done and tagged for future reference.

• Merge the release branch into develop:

git checkout develop
git merge --no-ff release-0.1.0

(Resolve any merge conflicts)

git push origin HEAD

It will automatically be published to https://devla.foodoasis.net. Please be sure to run the application here and make sure your changes are reflected in this deployed version of the develop branch

• We are now done with this release and can delete the release branch:

git branch -d release-0.1.0

Generating release notes

We are using gren with .grenrc.json config file and generating the log from Github Issues. See this page on the recommended convention for writing issue titles. We use the enhancement and bug labels to categorize issues for release notes.

1. Follow instructions on the gren setup section to generate and install your Github token.

2. Be in the project root directory

3. Run the script to update the notes

npm run release-notes

Creating a HotFix

Creating a HotFix should only be done by the release manager! A HotFix should only include very minor patches to the application, and is always based on the main branch. The new release number will be the same as the main branch number with the patch number incremented by one. For example a patch to release 34.67.22 should be 34.67.23.

• Make sure your local machine has an up-to-date version of the main branch:

git checkout main
git pull origin main

• Create a new release branch from main with the name hotfix-<release#>:

git checkout -b hotfix-34.67.23 main

• Update the release number in the application. This typically entails updating the package.json file version properties, and perhaps other locations where the release number might appear (For now, I just added it to the About.js component, though we should probably put it in a site footer or some inconspicuous place, so it can be viewed from the UI.)

• Commit the version number change:

git add -A
git commit -m "Bumped version number to 0.1.1"

• Run the application (locally and/or in a deployment environment) and modify the code to implement the fixe(s). These should be very minor changes - significant changes should be made by creating a feature release based on the develop branch as described above. When the hotfix is ready for release...
• Merge the hotfix branch into main:

git checkout main
git pull origin main
git merge --no-ff hotfix-0.1.1
git tag -a 0.1.1 -m "Release version 0.1.1"
git push origin HEAD

At present, Heroku is configured to detect the commit to main and automatically deploy the application to production. You should navigate to https://la.foodoasis.net after giving Heroku time to deploy and verify that the application runs, and any visible release # has been incremented.

The hotfix is now done and tagged for future reference.

• Merge the hotfix branch into develop:

git checkout develop
git merge --no-ff hotfix-0.1.1

(Resolve any merge conflicts)

git push origin HEAD

It will automatically be published to https://devla.foodoasis.net. Please be sure to run the application here and make sure your changes are reflected in this deployed version of the develop branch.

• We are now done with this release and can delete the release branch:

git branch -d hotfix-0.1.1