title: Steps to a Successful Release category: Contributing layout: default

Steps to a Successful Release

  1. Add all items to NEWS
  2. Update the contributors list in NEWS (ninja -C build git-contrib)
  3. Update the time and place in NEWS
  4. [RC1] Update version and library numbers in meson.build
  5. Check dbus docs with ninja -C build man/update-dbus-docs
  6. Tag the release: version=vXXX-rcY && git tag -s "${version}" -m "systemd ${version}"
  7. Do ninja -C build
  8. Make sure that the version string and package string match: build/systemctl --version
  9. Upload the documentation: ninja -C build doc-sync
  10. [FINAL] Close the github milestone and open a new one (https://github.com/systemd/systemd/milestones)
  11. “Draft” a new release on github (https://github.com/systemd/systemd/releases/new), mark “This is a pre-release” if appropriate.
  12. Check that announcement to systemd-devel, with a copy&paste from NEWS, was sent. This should happen automatically.
  13. Update IRC topic (/msg chanserv TOPIC #systemd Version NNN released)
  14. [FINAL] Push commits to stable, create an empty -stable branch: git push systemd-stable origin/master:master origin/master:refs/heads/${version}-stable, and change the default branch to latest release (https://github.com/systemd/systemd-stable/settings/branches).