Release Flower

This document describes the current release process. It may or may not change in the future.

During the release

The version number of a release is stated in pyproject.toml. To release a new version of Flower, the following things need to happen (in that order):

  1. Run python3 ./dev/update_changelog.py <YOUR_GH_TOKEN> in order to add every new change to the changelog (feel free to make manual changes to the changelog afterwards until it looks good).

  2. Once the changelog has been updated with all the changes, run ./dev/prepare-release-changelog.sh v<NEW_VERSION>, where <NEW_VERSION> is the version stated in pyproject.toml (notice the v added before it). This will replace the Unreleased header of the changelog by the version and current date, and it will add a thanking message for the contributors. Open a pull request with those changes.

  3. Once the pull request is merged, tag the release commit with the version number as soon as the PR is merged: git tag v<NEW_VERSION> (notice the v added before the version number), then git push --tags. This will create a draft release on GitHub containing the correct artifacts and the relevant part of the changelog.

  4. Check the draft release on GitHub, and if everything is good, publish it.

After the release

Create a pull request which contains the following changes:

  1. Increase the minor version in pyproject.toml by one.

  2. Update all files which contain the current version number if necessary.

  3. Add a new Unreleased section in changelog.md.

Merge the pull request on the same day (i.e., before a new nightly release gets published to PyPI).

Publishing a pre-release

Pre-release naming

PyPI supports pre-releases (alpha, beta, release candidate). Pre-releases MUST use one of the following naming patterns:

  • Alpha: MAJOR.MINOR.PATCHaN

  • Beta: MAJOR.MINOR.PATCHbN

  • Release candidate (RC): MAJOR.MINOR.PATCHrcN

Examples include:

  • 1.0.0a0

  • 1.0.0b0

  • 1.0.0rc0

  • 1.0.0rc1

This is in line with PEP-440 and the recommendations from the Python Packaging Authority (PyPA):

Note that the approach defined by PyPA is not compatible with SemVer 2.0.0 spec, for details consult the Semantic Versioning Specification (specifically item 11 on precedence).

Pre-release classification

Should the next pre-release be called alpha, beta, or release candidate?

  • RC: feature complete, no known issues (apart from issues that are classified as “won’t fix” for the next stable release) - if no issues surface this will become the next stable release

  • Beta: feature complete, allowed to have known issues

  • Alpha: not feature complete, allowed to have known issues