Release plan for 2020.8

[brettcannon]

Prerequisites

• Python 3.7 and higher
• run python3 -m pip install --user -r news/requirements.txt

Release candidate (Wednesday, Aug 05)

• Announce the code freeze (not just to team but also to debugger and language server)
• Update master for the release
  • Create a branch against master for a pull request
  • Change the version in package.json from a -dev suffix to -rc (🤖)
  • Run npm install to make sure package-lock.json is up-to-date (🤖)
  • Extension will pick up latest version of debugpy. If you need to pin to a particular version see install_debugpy.py.
  • Update languageServerVersion in package.json to point to the latest version of the Language Server.
  • Update CHANGELOG.md (🤖)
    • Run news (typically python news --final --update CHANGELOG.md | code-insiders -)
    • Copy over the "Thanks" section from the previous release
    • Make sure the "Thanks" section is up-to-date (e.g. compare to versions in requirements.json)
    • Touch up news entries (e.g. add missing periods)
    • Check the Markdown rendering to make sure everything looks good
    • Add any relevant news entries for debugpy and the language server if they were updated
  • Update ThirdPartyNotices-Distribution.txt by using https://tools.opensource.microsoft.com/notice (see team notes)
  • Update ThirdPartyNotices-Repository.txt as appropriate
  • Create a pull request against master (🤖)
  • Merge pull request into master
• Update the release branch
  • Delete the release branch in the repo
  • Create a new release branch from master
  • (alternately, force-push the master branch to the GitHub "release" branch)
  • (if necessary) Request that the branch be set anew as "protected"
• Update master post-release (🤖)
  • Bump the version number to the next monthly ("YYYY.M.0-dev") release in the master branch
    • package.json
    • package-lock.json
  • Create a pull request against master
  • Merge pull request into master
• Announce the code freeze is over
• Update Component Governance (Click on "microsoft/vscode-python" on that page)
  • Provide details for any automatically detected npm dependencies
  • Manually add any repository dependencies
• GDPR bookkeeping (@brettcannon) (🤖; see team notes)
• Open appropriate documentation issues
  • new features
  • settings changes
  • etc. (ask the team)
• Begin drafting a blog post
• Ask CTI to test the release candidate

Final (Wednesday, Aug 12)

Preparation

• Make sure the appropriate pull requests for the documentation -- including the WOW page -- are ready
• final updates to the release branch
  • Create a branch against release for a pull request
  • Update the version in package.json (🤖)
  • Run npm install to make sure package-lock.json is up-to-date (the only update should be the version number if package-lock.json has been kept up-to-date) (🤖)
  • Update CHANGELOG.md (🤖)
    • Update version and date for the release section
    • Run news and copy-and-paste new entries (typically python news --final | code-insiders -; quite possibly nothing new to add)
    • Add pylance to the list of projects we rely on under the "Thanks" section
  • Update ThirdPartyNotices-Distribution.txt by using https://tools.opensource.microsoft.com/notice (🤖; see team notes)
  • Update ThirdPartyNotices-Repository.txt manually if necessary
  • Create pull request against release (🤖)
  • Merge pull request into release
• Make sure component governance is happy

Release

• Publish the release via Azure DevOps
  • Make sure CI is passing
  • Make sure the "Upload" stage on the release page succeeded
  • Make sure no extraneous files are being included in the .vsix file (make sure to check for hidden files)
  • Deploy the "Publish" stage
• Create a GitHub release
  • Have tag match the released version
  • Copy the changelog entry for the release as the description
• Publish documentation changes
• Publish the blog post
• Determine if a hotfix is needed
• Merge release back into master (🤖)

Clean up after this release

• Go through info needed issues and close any that have no activity for over a month (🤖)
• GDPR bookkeeping (🤖)

Prep for the next release

• Create a new release plan (🤖)
• (Un-)pin release plan issues (🤖)

[kimadeline]

Copying @luabud's comment from #13010 (comment) in case this hasn't been done in the previous point release:

we should also update our changelog in the list of supported projects at some point

[luabud]

@kimadeline thanks for bringing it up!

@brettcannon I updated your comment to include a checkbox under "update changelog" so we don't forget to do that for this release plan.

[brettcannon]

We can also just drop the "Thanks" section if we think no one is reading it.

[luabud]

I am reading it 😂

[IanMatthewHuff]

Whoops, realized that I didn't close this after the release. Closing now.

[brettcannon]

@IanMatthewHuff @karthiknadig I left this open because the "merge release into main" step was never checked off. Did that ever occur?

[brettcannon]

(And I was waiting for that before doing the last two steps of creating a new release plan.)

[karthiknadig]

Not from the latest release (last week). I am preparing a merge back PR right now.

[IanMatthewHuff]

My apologies. I did do the merge from release back into main for the initial release (not the point release that @karthiknadig) mentioned. Just forgot to check off the issue.