SeaMonkey:Release Process

Note: This page is currently a work in progress, I'll try to fill in any missing item when we're doing the next SeaMonkey release (which should be 1.1.5 then).

This page is a collection of things currently done to do SeaMonkey 1.1.x releases, so that the process is documented in some way.

Tagging

Creating A New Release Tag

The first step for doing the actual release is to create a tag in CVS. I usually go into an empty directory on my local (Linux) machine and run the following bash script first (after adjusting the pull and release tag variables at the beginning of it):

#!/bin/bash

CVS_LOGIN=kairo%kairo.at
CVS_REPOS="-d :ext:$CVS_LOGIN@cvs.mozilla.org:/cvsroot"
PULLTAG=GECKO181_20071004_RELBRANCH
#PULLTAG=MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH
CLIENTTAG=FIREFOX_2_0_0_8_RELEASE
MINIBRANCH=SEAMONKEY_1_1_5_MINIBRANCH
RELEASETAG=SEAMONKEY_1_1_5_RELEASE
CO_OPTS=MOZ_CO_DATE=\"`date +"%F %T"`\"
#CO_OPTS=

echo "cvs $CVS_REPOS checkout -r $PULLTAG $CO_OPTS  mozilla/client.mk"
echo "cd mozilla"
echo "make -f client.mk checkout $CO_OPTS MOZ_CO_PROJECT=suite"
echo "cvs $CVS_REPOS tag -b $MINIBRANCH client.mk"
echo "cvs $CVS_REPOS commit -r $MINIBRANCH -m 'initial minibranch commit' client.mk"
echo "mv client.mk ../client.mk.orig"
echo "sed 's/$CLIENTTAG/$RELEASETAG/' ../client.mk.orig > client.mk"
echo "rm ../client.mk.orig"
echo "cvs $CVS_REPOS commit -r $MINIBRANCH -m 'edit tags to pull from $RELEASETAG' client.mk"
echo "mv xpfe/bootstrap/version.txt ../version.txt.orig"
echo "sed 's/pre//' ../version.txt.orig > xpfe/bootstrap/version.txt"
echo "rm ../version.txt.orig"
echo "mv xpfe/bootstrap/module.ver ../module.ver.orig"
echo "sed 's/pre//' ../module.ver.orig > xpfe/bootstrap/module.ver"
echo "rm ../module.ver.orig"
echo "cvs $CVS_REPOS commit -r $PULLTAG -m 'remove \"pre\" postfix from SeaMonkey version on release branch' xpfe/bootstrap/module.ver xpfe/bootstrap/version.txt"
echo "cvs $CVS_REPOS tag -F $RELEASETAG client.mk"
echo "cvs $CVS_REPOS tag $RELEASETAG"

This outputs a list of commands to run for the tagging process, which I execute step by step, checking that the right thing is actually done. SeaMonkey usually pulls from a not-much-changing Gecko release branch near to a Firefox release tag (the CLIENTTAG which is set for pulling in that branch's client.mk), so we usually have a well-defined state to pull, but to make sure when pulling from that branch, I also set the CO_OPTS variable to use an exact date (automatically to the time of pulling in that script) so that the tree is 100% well-defined.

The commands pull a client.mk and use it to pull a complete suite (SeaMonkey) source checkout. We're only tagging files that are part of this checkout. For versions where building own builds with the old calendar extension was still supported, we also included calendar in that pull and in our tag as well as our source tarballs (see later), but nowadays the suite pull is enough.

The first commit to client.mk does not show up anywhere actually, so the message is useless, but I remember that CVS didn't correctly realize that it had the state of that minibranch and might choke afterwards. The mv/sed/rm stuff is to make the client.mk pull our new SeaMonkey release tag, the second commit to client.mk will actually be recorded in the file's cvs history and should tell what that tag change actually was.

We do similar things to module.ver and version.txt in the next steps to remove the "pre" postfix on the SeaMonkey version number, just that we can commit them directly to the Gecko release branch, as those are SeaMonkey-specific files anyways.

The actual tagging is done with the last two commands, first the new tag is forced on the client.mk file, then the rest of the tree is tagged.

Usually, the next step from here is to create a first set of candidate builds.

Moving An Existing Release Tag

For later candidates, the tag is moved on any files that have changed compared to the older candidate.

To do this, first I update the files to the respective versions, most of the time this will be something like

cvs -d :ext:kairo%kairo.at@cvs.mozilla.org:/cvsroot checkout -r GECKO181_20071004_RELBRANCH MOZ_CO_DATE="2007-10-08 17:19:35" mozilla/updated/file1.cpp mozilla/updated/file2.h

Then, move the tag like this:

cvs -d :ext:kairo%kairo.at@cvs.mozilla.org:/cvsroot tag -F SEAMONKEY_1_1_5_RELEASE mozilla/updated/file1.cpp mozilla/updated/file2.h

With this, we can recreate candidate builds from the moved release tag.

Creating Builds

Once the cvs-mirror has updated the tagging changes, it's time to log into our release machines. Those machines on all the primary platforms have the latest bug 343891 patch applied so that we can create (stub) installers with the correct URLs in them right out of tinderbox.

So, I'm logging into those boxes, cd to the release-seamonkey-1.1 directory and execute "./tinderbox clobber restart" there, which does a BuildOnce clobber run producing the builds. Note that only Linux can do this from the remote ssh shell, Mac is done via VNC from a terminal window and Windows via RDP from a cmd window, so all of them can perform basic tinderbox tests on the builds.

The Linux machine has additional stuff added to produce source tarballs. I have a script there that does

export MOZ_POSTFLIGHT_ALL="~/tinderbox/Makefile.tarball"

before starting the tinderbox run, and here's the Makefile.tarball file:

DEPTH		= $(MOZ_OBJDIR)
topsrcdir	= $(TOPSRCDIR)
srcdir		= $(TOPSRCDIR)
VPATH		= $(TOPSRCDIR)

include $(MOZ_OBJDIR)/config/autoconf.mk

include $(TOPSRCDIR)/config/rules.mk

include $(TOPSRCDIR)/toolkit/mozapps/installer/package-name.mk

SRC_TAR_BASE = $(MOZ_PKG_APPNAME)-$(MOZ_PKG_VERSION).source

postflight_all:
	tar --directory=$(TOPSRCDIR)/.. -cjf $(TOPSRCDIR)/$(MOZ_OBJDIR)/dist/$(SRC_TAR_BASE).tar.bz2 mozilla
	tar --directory=$(TOPSRCDIR)/.. -czf $(TOPSRCDIR)/$(MOZ_OBJDIR)/dist/$(SRC_TAR_BASE).tar.gz mozilla

This enables us to conveniently provide a source tarball from exactly the same state and upload it to stage together with the release builds.

All the boxes are configured to upload into a candidates-seamonkey1.1.5/ directory in my personal home dir on stage, while the ftp_url points to the final location on releases.mozilla.org. This enables me to both move that candidates dir to the SeaMonkey nightly dir on public FTP for testing as well as to later copy those builds directly to the release location without any further change, given this candidate is made final after QA.

Doing The Actual Release

TODO