OTA Connect Developer Guide

Release process

To create a new release of aktualizr and garage-deploy, there are several discrete steps to follow:

1. Update the changelog and other docs

This is normally a good time to update the changelog. Ideally, the changelog should be updated with the new release number before creating the release so that the packaged source code includes the correct information about the release. The easiest way to check the changelog is to review all PRs merged to master since the last release was made and to verify that any important changes that impact the user experience are reflected in the changelog.

There are a few additional documents that should be updated to refer to the new release:

  • The docs README contains a table with links to the doxygen docs for each release.

  • Several pages contains references to the latest release of aktualizr and/or garage-deploy via a variable set in a doc snippet created for this purpose.

This is also a good time to review the docs in general and to consider whether any changes in this release might have affected the docs.

2. Pull in any new changes from the current docs branch

The docs published as latest in the OTA Connect Developer Guide are built from the most recent release’s docs branch ({version}-docs). There will very likely be changes from there that have not been pulled into master yet. Open up a PR to merge the previous release’s docs into master, resolving any merge conflicts as needed. Once that PR is merged, you can move on to the next step.

3. Create a new tag

Releases are built automatically by gitlab from annotated tags of the form major.minor, where major and minor are numbers. We normally set major to the current year and minor to an incrementing number beginning at 1.

To create a release, checkout the revision you want to bless, then:

git tag -as <tag>   # e.g. git tag -a 2018.4
git push github <tag>

Gitlab will build this tag and automatically create a release for it on github.

3.1. Updating an already-released tag

Generally, you should not update a tag after it has already been pushed to github. This is asking for confusion and problems down the line. However, if something goes wrong in creating the release from the tag, you may need to do this anyway. Note that you will need to manually delete the release on github if it has been created already. (Otherwise, the release’s files will not get updated.) You will then need to either retry the specific github-release step or re-trigger the entire pipeline (which can be done by re-pushing the tag to github).

4. Create a new docs branch

Create (and push to github) a new branch with the commit you just tagged as the parent:

git checkout -b <tag>-docs # e.g. git checkout -b 2019.63-docs
git push github <tag>-docs

5. Update doxygen on github

You will need to update the doxygen documentation both for the new release and master.

5.1. Add doxygen pages for the new release on github

To add doxygen docs for a new tag, you will need to do something like the following:

  1. If you haven’t already, check out the newly created tag (git checkout 2018.63, for example).

  2. Create a clean build directory (to prevent using stale objects), then run CMake and doxygen again:

    rm -rf build/*
cd build
cmake ..
make doxygen

  3. Clone a second aktualizr repo and run git checkout gh-pages.

  4. In the second repo, make a directory for the tag or commit you wish to add, i.e. mkdir 2018.63.

  5. Copy the contents of <build_dir>/docs/doxygen/html into the directory you just created. (Something like cp -a <build_dir>/docs/doxygen/html/* <second_repo>/2018.63.)

  6. In the second repo, run git add 2018.63, git commit -as, and git push.

  7. Wait a minute or two for github to refresh and render the files.

5.2. Update doxygen master

This is also a good time to update the doxygen documentation for master on github (although it can also be done more often if desired). You will need to do something like the following:

  1. Repeat steps 1 through 3 of the preceding section (as necessary).

  2. In the second repo, clear out all the files in the root of the directory as well as the search subdirectory. Make sure to leave the release-specific subdirectories (such as 2018.12) intact. (Run something like git rm search/* *.css *.html *.js *.png *.map *.md5 *.png *.svg).

  3. Copy the contents of <build_dir>/docs/doxygen/html into the root of the second repo. (Something like cp -a <build_dir>/docs/doxygen/html/* <second_repo>.)

  4. In the second repo, run git add ., git commit -as, and git push.

  5. Wait a minute or two for github to refresh and render the files.

6. Update the description of the github release

Once the release is ready on github, it should be edited to include a link to the changelog and doxygen documentation for that particular release. You can use a previous release as a model of how to format these links.

7. Update the Uptane fork of aktualizr

Uptane has a fork of aktualizr in their namespace. It should be updated with the same version of aktualizr used to make the new release.

8. Update the homebrew recipe for aktualizr

The homebrew aktualizr recipe should be updated with the new release. You’ll need a mac, with homebrew installed, to do this.

  1. Edit the recipe on your local system with brew edit aktualizr, and replace the old version tag with the new one.

  2. Build it, and then bottle it:

    brew rm aktualizr && \
brew install --build-bottle aktualizr && \
brew bottle aktualizr

    This will create a bottle file named aktualizr--VERSION.mojave.bottle.tar.gz, and output a block of Ruby code that looks something like this:

      bottle do
    cellar :any
    sha256 "391bc242685d86fd4fc69d90d98e10a464e6feebca943d3f48f848615c898085" => :mojave
  end

  3. Rename the file, removing one of the dashes (i.e. mv aktualizr--2019.6.mojave.bottle.tar.gz aktualizr-2019.6.mojave.bottle.tar.gz). I don’t know why the generated filename is always wrong, but it is.

  4. Add the renamed bottle file as an artifact to the release on the aktualizr releases page.

  5. Replace the bottle do block in your local recipe with the generated block from step 2, and add the appropriate root_url directive.

  6. Test the recipe locally, including installing from the bottle: brew reinstall --force-bottle aktualizr.

  7. Open a PR on the homebrew-otaconnect repo to update the recipe with all your changes.

9. Verify the released Debian packages

Newly created releases automatically trigger an OTF pipeline in gitlab. Currently, you still need to manually verify that the pipeline actually succeeded.

10. Update meta-updater

The version of aktualizr used by meta-updater should be updated to match the new release. First, open a PR against master that updates aktualizr to the same commit used in the newly released tag. This is also a good time to update the aktualizr recipe to pull the latest version of garage-sign.

Once that PR has passed oe-selftest, successfully passed review, and gotten merged, you should then backport that change, along with anything else relevant since the last backport was done, to the currently supported release branches. Note that while master is allowed to use arbitrary recent version of aktualizr, the release branches should only use released versions of aktualizr.