PointReleaseProcess
To be carried out by: nominated stable release manager, with support from the stable release updates and 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
Between Release minus 6 months and Release minus 2 months:
- Discuss candidates for new or improved hardware support with affected parties. Some sources for this work should be:
- the Canonical support team (via Steve George)
- customers
- the Ubuntu kernel team
- the Ubuntu QA team
- Establish a hit-list of bugs to fix in the point release using a milestone. Milestoning bugs is not a commitment to including the changes in the point release; they may be deferred after further information becomes available.
- In concert with affected developers, triage the hit-list for feasibility.
Release minus 2 months:
Process stable release updates as normal. For hardware-enabling fixes, the package should be tested on the affected hardware prior to submitting to sign-off for -proposed.
- 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.
Release minus 1 month:
- In coordination with QA, verify that all candidate bugs are fixed.
Upload a new base-files package to -proposed to bump the lsb_release description (example for 8.04.4). Do not change the DISTRIB_RELEASE value, which is used programmatically by third-party software.
If the kernel or associated modules have 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.
- Notify Evan Dandrea to update umenu and wubi for the point release.
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.
- Build CD images (which will be published on cdimage.ubuntu.com) and smoke-test in some convenient environment to check for obvious failures.
Release minus 3 weeks:
- Contact IS, QA, and/or certification as appropriate to request testing for hardware recertification.
- Iterate CD images as needed based on testing feedback, in coordination with the kernel team.
Release minus 6 days:
- Once testing is verified to be complete, move packages to -updates.
- Prepare change summary and release announcement
script to use for preparing the change summary: http://people.canonical.com/~cjwatson/lucid-updates.py
- if this is the final point release for the distroseries (because a new LTS will be released soon), include a reminder of this and of the support cycle/EOL.
- Notify Matthew Nuzum of the upcoming point release. Include detailed information about which image file names will change on the mirrors for the point release, and which ones will not.
Release:
release images as final, and move the previous images to old-releases.ubuntu.com:
- Check with James Troup whether the previous point release needs to be moved off before prepublishing due to mirror space constraints.
- Prepublish images:
DIST=lucid for-project ubuntu publish-release ubuntu-server/daily 20100708 server poolonly (similar for alternates, desktops, etc.)
- TODO much more detail here
- Notify Matthew Nuzum to update the iso URLs on the ubuntu.com website
- Create a snapshot of the archive:
lp_archive@cocoplum:~$ point-release-snapshot lucid lucid.1-security-updates-snapshot
which will create a hardlink farm in ~lp_archive/point-releases/.
File a bug on ubuntu-website to have https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuHashes updated.
- send the announcement mail
Release +1 day:
- restore the .manifest.full file on releases.ubuntu.com