This document is intended to be used and kept up to date by the Fedora Release Manager.  It details the steps necessary to perform an official release of Fedora.

The release version in the documentation below is identified as X.Y, replace this in the instructions with the current release (eg 3.6.1).
X is the major point version, Y is the minor point version, and Z is the maintenance point.

The previous release version (snapshot previous documentation) is identified as A.B, replace this with the previous release (eg 3.6).

Before Release Day

Verify release privileges

To make sure release day goes smoothly, you should ensure that:

• You have an account with commit, release, and shell access for the fedora-commons project on sourceforge.net. As a committer, you should already have this level of access.
• You have an account with manager privileges on the Fedora Commons Plone wiki.
• You have an account with edit privileges on the duraspace.org Confluence wiki.
• You have an oss.sonatype.com account and have requested to be given permission to publish to the org.fcrepo groupId by adding a comment to the Fedora Sonatype Hosting Ticket
• Your maven settings.xml includes the following:

<settings>
  ...
  <servers>
    ...
    <server>
      <id>sonatype-nexus-snapshots</id>
      <username>your-jira-id</username>
      <password>your-jira-pwd</password>
    </server>
    <server>
      <id>sonatype-nexus-staging</id>
      <username>your-jira-id</username>
      <password>your-jira-pwd</password>
    </server>
  </servers>
  ...
</settings>

Prepare and distribute test plan

The test plan should also be ready prior to code freeze.

It should include:

• Which platform/database combinations will be tested
• Which automated tests will be run, and by whom
• Which manual tests will be run, and by whom
• Which service compatibility tests (GSearch, OAIProvider, SWORD-Fedora, DirIngest) will be run, and by whom
• Instructions on how testers will report on test results
• If releasing on JDK 8, ensure that the javadoc:javadoc mvn target runs before beginning the release process (it has more stringent validations in JDK 8)- if necessary, use the Java endorsed standards override mechanism to ensure the JAXB implementation version is at least 2.2.11. This is so that the WSDL and XSD generated classes will produce valid javadoc output.

Create release branch and begin final test phase

Update online resources

If any online resources have been modified or added to during the release, these must be updated. Particularly XSD schema files served at http://www.fedora-commons.org/definitions/1/0/ must be verified.

Release Day

Update the KEYS file

Make sure the KEYS file in subversion is up-to-date with the latest, exported public keys of the committers (and most importantly, the release manager).  For more information on this file, see this page.

For *nix systems use the following command to add a missing key to the KEYS file:
(gpg --list-sigs AB76196 && gpg -a --export AB76196) >> KEYS

Build and release the final distribution to Maven Central

In order to build the release make sure that:

• you have a working PGP installation with your code signing key as the default key

Run the following commands to generate and upload all built artifacts to the Sonatype staging repository
(the "DreleaseVersion and -DdevelopmentVersion" arguments are optional-you'll just be prompted for them otherwise):

mvn release:prepare -DdryRun -DreleaseVersion=X.X.X -DdevelopmentVersion=X.X.Y-SNAPSHOT
mvn release:clean && mvn release:prepare -DreleaseVersion=X.X.X -DdevelopmentVersion=X.X.Y-SNAPSHOT
mvn release:perform

Login to https://oss.sonatype.org

Find the staging repository, check that it looks good, and "Close" it. Then "Release" it. This will publish the artifacts to the Sonatype releases repository and start the process of syncing them with central. The artifacts may take several hours to reach central. When finished, they'll be available at http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/fcrepo.

Upload selected artifacts to Sourceforge and verify the distribution

Upload all files listed below to the fedora-commons project at sourceforge.net. Follow the pattern established for previous releases, where all files associated with the release reside in a single version numbered folder under https://sourceforge.net/projects/fedora-commons/files/fedora/

The artifacts to be uploaded to Sourceforge, as well as PGP signatures, SHA1 checksums, file sizes, etc., can be found at the central Maven repository search site: http://search.maven.org/#search%7Cga%7C1%7Corg.fcrepo.

Files sent to sourceforge and linked directly from the documentation's Download page should include:

For each file, also add a *.asc file, containing the PGP signature for the file, as created by Maven and stored in the central repository.

Change the primary download page on sourceforge so it points to the new fcrepo installer jar:

• In the file manager view, click on the "i" icon next to the fcrepo-installer-X.Y.jar file you just uploaded
• Select all for "Default Download For:".

It may take up to five minutes for all the Sourceforge links to be updated.

Complete the Duraspace wiki documentation updates

Current Fedora Repository Documentation wiki: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FEDORA38

At the very minimum, update the following:

Downloads
Release Notes

If this is a new major or minor point release, copy the previous point release documentation to create the current wiki (/FEDORAXY), then update accordingly. Mark the new pages as current, and update the pages in the previous documentation to indicate they are out-of-date.

If this is a maintenance point release, create separate child release note pages for each release covered by the documentation (see https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FEDORA38/Release+Notes for an example).
Otherwise, post the release notes in the Release Notes page (see https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FEDORA35/Release+Notes for an example).

Update any other documentation as needed, per changes/features added with this release.

Make sure the license and copyright information is up-to-date with this release.

Announce release

Let Carol Minton Morris (clt6 at cornell dot edu) know that the release is complete and can be announced.

Depending on the significance of the release, the announcement will be disseminated in various forms to:

• The DuraSpace blog
• The fedora-commons.org homepage (as a news item)
• Twitter (@FedoraRepo, others)
• Mailing lists (fedora users, developers, possibly others)