Release checklist Plone 6.0.6 (June 2023)

[mauritsvanrees]

See the release schedule.

Release packages, update versions

• Check Jenkins Status: should be green. (This should be checked often during the release process.)
• In coredev, check packages for updates: bin/manage report --interactive. This is less needed now that we have mr.roboto to add packages to the checkouts. Use bin/versioncheck to see if any new PyPI releases are worth adding, or check the artifact of the versioncheck GitHub Action.
• Release individual packages from checkouts.cfg.
• Check that the version numbers of CMFPlone metadata.xml and latest upgrade step are in sync, and that they are higher than in the previous Plone release.
• Handle special packages, often handled by special people. :-) You can can ping people in the release-team channel on Discord, in the current issue, or individually:
  • plonetheme.barceloneta needs a release on PyPI and npmjs. Maybe ask Peter Holzer (agitator) or Peter Mathis (petschki) for assistence.
  • plone.staticresources and mockup. Ask on Discord in the classic-ui or ask Johannes (thet), Peter Mathis (petschki) or Maik (MrTango).
  • plone.restapi and maybe plone.volto. If needed, ask the Plone REST api team or Timo (tisto) for a new release.
  • plone.app.locales. Create an issue there or ask Mikel (erral).
  • Release plone.app.upgrade and Plone yourself.
  • Update the versions of those packages in versions.cfg.
• Make an alpha/beta/release candidate release of Products.CMFPlone (e.g. 6.0.0a1, later 6.0.0b1 and 6.0.0rc1). Fine to release this on PyPI. Once Plone 6 is final, we can continue doing release candidates for the bugfix releases, so people can try it in a pending release.

Release notes, constraints, dist.plone.org

• Adjust coredev branch release/6.0-dev. Most importantly, the auto-checkout list in checkouts.cfg should be empty, and the versions.cfg and requirements.txt should be the same. One way that works for me: git checkout release/6.0-dev; git reset --hard 6.0; git reset origin/release/6.0-dev. Then check which changes you want to commit.
• Update the 6.0-dev directory on dist.plone.org, and gather files to put there:
  • You can use tox -c release/tox.ini -p auto to create or copy some files in release/dist. But you need to create some of those files first.
  • Create a unified changelog based on the previous release: bin/manage changelog --start=6.0.0a1 > release/changelog.txt. Remove the uninteresting top lines. You may want to link to the Zope changelog with a specific tag.
  • Create a file release/RELEASE-NOTES.md. It may be enough to look through the changelog and copy interesting changes.
  • Get the versions.cfg file and any other versions files from coredev.
  • Create a release/constraints.txt file from this. The above tox command generates this. Note: at some point I expect the constraints file to become leading, and we may need to generate a versions.cfg file instead.
  • Copy (rsync) these files to the pending release directory. (We used to copy packages as well, but we do not do this for Plone 6 anymore.)
• Write a post on community.plone.org announcing a pending/soft release. See example. In the 6.0 alpha/beta/rc stage, we can skip pending releases and just make a real release.
• Wait for feedback, preferably at most a few days. As said, in the alpha/beta/rc stage, we can skip this.

Final release, Docker

• Make final release of Products.CMFPlone to PyPI, update versions.cfg.
• In release/6.0-dev branch update changelog, release notes, constraints.txt.
• Create tag of the release/6.0-dev branch, e.g. 6.0.0a1, and push to GitHub.
• Make final release directory on dist.plone.org, with versions, requirements, constraints, changelog, release notes.
• Update the "-latest" links on dist.plone.org, e.g. ln -sfT 6.0.0a1 6.0-latest
• Notify Érico Andrei and/or Fred van Dijk in the #release-team Discord channel that there is a new release. They will create Docker images. Examples of changes: README.md and version.txt.

Announcements

You probably want to wait until the Docker images are there, but don't wait long.

• Create release page on https://plone.org/download/releases
• Send mail to Marketing Team so they can prepare announcements.
• Update the https://plone.org/security/hotfixes/ page in the configuration control panel. This is done in the configuration registry: plone.securitysupport, plone.versions, plone.activemaintenance. You could ask the security team.
• Publish release page on plone.org.
• Update the release schedule: note the new release, and say when the next release in this series is expected.
• Edit the link on https://plone.org/download.
• Announce on community.plone.org.
• In plone/documentation's conf.py, update PLONE_BACKEND_PATCH_VERSION and PLONE_BACKEND_MINOR_VERSION as needed. Ask Steve Piercy or do it yourself. Here is a sample PR.
• Ask Philip Bauer and/or Fred van Dijk to update the demo sites. Here is a sample PR.

[mauritsvanrees]

Let's look at the timing. There are two weeks left in June. Last week of June has two sprints: MidSummer and Cerrado. First week of July I am on vacation. Second week of July is the ArtSprint.
So it would be good to prepare Plone 6.0.6 next week, and have it ready in the last week of June.

• Monday 19, Tuesday 20: make releases, including of the "special" packages.
• Wednesday 21, Thursday 22: final touches, make release candidate.
• Leave a bit more room than so far for testing.
• Tuesday 27 June: Plone 6.0.6 final release.

Note: in July I want to skip Plone 6.0, and only do a 5.2 release. In August we will do a 6.0.7.

cc @tisto @sneridagh @erral @petschki @thet @gforcada

[mauritsvanrees]

I want to point out one upcoming major change that I want to include in this release: update plone.staticresources/mockup/plonetheme.barceloneta/mosaic to Bootstrap 5.3. See my comments on the coredev PR, starting here. There is a problem with custom themes, but I have seen that this already is a problem with existing or new custom themes simply because Bootstrap 5.3 is available, and will be pulled in automatically if you have no package-lock.json yet. As far as I see, an existing theme can continue to use Bootstrap 5.2, even when Plone 6.0.6 uses Bootstrap 5.3. We need to document the needed changes, but this is needed regardless of whether we update Plone Classic UI to Bootstrap 5.3 or not.
In the end, it is no breaking change, just a new feature release, like we do new features in Volto and plone.restapi as well.

If you have any thoughts about this, best add them to the coredev PR.

[erral]

I'll be off during the weekend, so I have just released plone.app.locales = 6.0.15

[petschki]

As far as I see, an existing theme can continue to use Bootstrap 5.2, even when Plone 6.0.6 uses Bootstrap 5.3.

That's correct. Though it's very simple to upgrade to newest @plone/plonetheme-barceloneta-base with BS 5.3 if you generated a custom theme based on Barceloneta... see this commit which only adds the new dark variable files and you're good to go: plone/bobtemplates.plone@e61c344

Everything else is basically only color mode features which does not interfere with your Bootstrap 5.2 theme. I'm preparing PRs in bobtemplate.plone and plonetheme.barceloneta right now which will document this.

[mauritsvanrees]

Plone 6.0.6rc1 is available. Announcement:
https://community.plone.org/t/plone-6-0-6-soft-released/17595

[mauritsvanrees]

Plone 6.0.6 is available: https://dist.plone.org/release/6.0.6/

[mauritsvanrees]

All done. Thanks!

• https://community.plone.org/t/plone-6-0-6-released/17605
• https://dist.plone.org/release/6.0.6/
• https://plone.org/download/releases/6.0.6