Release Process for Registrar

Overview

A step-by-step instruction guide to creating a release

Steps

1. Navigate to https://github.com/cisagov/getgov/tags
2. Find the desired staging release (it should normally be from 2-5 days ago). Save the release tag.
3. In a terminal window run git checkout releaseTag (where releaseTag is the tag from the step above)
4. In the same window run git tag newTag (note, tag must start with v and that the v is lowercase, for example v0.5.0). Tags use semantic versioning (the next version after 0.9.0 is 0.10.0). Go to version 1.0.0 when the code is ready for use by the public.
5. In the same window run git push origin newTag
6. Navigate back to https://github.com/cisagov/getgov/releases
7. Click on Draft a New Release
8. select the tag that you just made
9. Click Generate Release Notes
10. This should generate the title, capitalize the V in the title so it's differentiated from the tag
11. If you made this release after the staging release you may see no changes appearing. In this case, go to the staging release that you based this release off of (which ever releaseTag you used). Then copy the release notes from that and place in the body of these release notes.
12. Click Publish release
13. Once the release workflow finishes log in and check that stable is working as expected

Notes

The deploy action will run as soon as you push the new tag, it does not wait until you make a release. The release is just for documentation.