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Making Releases

The latest version of Topographica is always available by SVN, but we also make more stable versions available periodically. To make such a release, the steps we generally follow are:

  1. Ensure that no one besides yourself has any modified files checked out in SVN; if they do, make sure all of it gets checked in or does not need to be included in the release, and ensure that none of it will be checked in until the release is complete.

  2. Make sure you have checked out topographica-win. If not: 

    svn co $TOPOROOT/trunk/topographica-win topographica-win

  3. Increment the RELEASE number in ./Makefile, and do "make new-version".

  4. Update the documentation files, especially README.txt and doc/Downloads/index_text.php. The rest should be read through, making sure that the auto-generated pages are working properly, and that those written by hand match the current version of the code. In particular, doc/Reference_Manual/index_text.php needs to match the current version of the reference manual (don't forget to make reference-manual).

  5. Update the tutorials to match changes to the GUI, if necessary. A simple way to get updated versions of each image is to:

    1. Change to the doc/Tutorials/images/ directory
    2. Launch xv on all of the images (xv * &)
    3. Select the image you want to update, using xv's right-click menu
    4. Select Grab from xv's right-click menu
    5. Select Save from xv's right-click menu

    The advantage of this method is that you never need to type in filenames, make sure they match the .html or .php file, and so on.

    Be sure to work through the tutorial once it is updated, to make sure all of the instructions still make sense for the new release.

  6. Update Changelog.txt (by making a copy of ChangeLog.txt, doing "make Changelog.txt", and pasting the new items at the top of the copy (so that any fixes to the old items are preserved). Also summarize major changes in it for the release notes in News/.

  7. Update the remaining work lists in Future_Work/index_text.php and Future_Work/current_text.php to reflect completed tasks and changes in priority.

  8. Check any modified files into SVN.

  9. Save all open files from within any editor, and do a "make dist" to create a candidate distribution archive. (To ensure that all files are saved in Emacs, you can do "M-x compile RET make dist".) Note that this step is best done on a local disk rather than on a network drive. (Additionally, using a scratch copy of Topographica on which you have run 'make -C external clean' will speed things up, but this is not necessary.)

  10. Unpack the distribution archive and examine it:

    1. Use "ls -lFRA" or "find ." to ensure that no stray files were included; if they were, edit "distclean:" in ./Makefile to delete them from the generated distribution.

    2. Double-check the generated documentation to ensure that it is complete and was generated properly.

    3. Compile the source on various platforms, ensuring that there are no errors. Also perform a self-test on the various platforms ("make tests; make slow-tests").

  11. If you find problems, go back to step 6 and start over.

  12. When the package is ready for release, copy binaries to SourceForge using their admin interface, and add a news release and screenshots. As of 8/2008, the upload command would be something like rsync -avP -e ssh topographica-0.9.5.tar.gz ceball@frs.sourceforge.net:uploads/

  13. Build on Windows and make .exe versions, test them, and upload them to SourceForge.

  14. Tag the files in SVN as being the latest stable version using "make LATEST_STABLE", copy the trunk to svn's releases/ directory using "make tag-release", and update the public web site with this version using "make sf-web-site". Note that this last step should be run from the copy of Topographica you created for distribution so that no stray files from doc/ are uploaded. Also note that these three commands can be run together with "make svn-release".

  15. Notify the other developers that they may once again commit new code to the SVN repository.

  16. Send an announcement to topographica-announce at lists.sf.net.

Hosted by: SourceForge Logo James A. Bednar (jbednar@inf.ed.ac.uk) Last update: Thu Sep 18 22:43:13 BST 2008.