9 KiB
Releasing
This document describes the process for releasing a new version of Electron.
Determine which branch to release from
- If releasing beta, run the scripts below from
master
. - If releasing a stable version, run the scripts below from the branch you're stabilizing.
Find out what version change is needed
Run npm run prepare-release -- --notesOnly
to view auto generated release
notes. The notes generated should help you determine if this is a major, minor,
patch, or beta version change. Read the
Version Change Rules for more information.
NB: If releasing from a branch, e.g. 1-8-x, check out the branch with
git checkout 1-8-x
rather than git checkout -b remotes/origin/1-8-x
.
The scripts need git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD
to return a short name,
e.g. no remotes/origin/
Set your tokens and environment variables
You'll need Electron S3 credentials in order to create and upload an Electron release. Contact a team member for more information.
There are a handful of *_TOKEN
environment variables needed by the release
scripts. Once you've generated these per-user tokens, you may want to keep
them in a local file that you can source
when starting a release.
ELECTRON_GITHUB_TOKEN
: Create as described at https://github.com/settings/tokens/new, giving the token repo access scope.APPVEYOR_TOKEN
: Create a token from https://windows-ci.electronjs.org/api-token If you don't have an account, ask a team member to add you.CIRCLE_TOKEN
: Create a token from "Personal API Tokens" at https://circleci.com/account/api
Run the prepare-release script
The prepare release script will do the following:
- Check if a release is already in process and if so it will halt.
- Create a release branch.
- Bump the version number in several files. See this bump commit for an example.
- Create a draft release on GitHub with auto-generated release notes.
- Push the release branch.
- Call the APIs to run the release builds.
Once you have determined which type of version change is needed, run the
prepare-release
script with arguments according to your need:
[major|minor|patch|beta]
to increment one of the version numbers, or--stable
to indicate this is a stable version
For example:
Major version change
npm run prepare-release -- major
Minor version change
npm run prepare-release -- minor
Patch version change
npm run prepare-release -- patch
Beta version change
npm run prepare-release -- beta
Promote beta to stable
npm run prepare-release -- --stable
Tip: You can test the new version number before running prepare-release
with
a dry run of the bump-version
script with the same major/minor/patch/beta
arguments, e.g.:
$ ./script/bump-version.py --bump minor --dry-run
Wait for builds ⏳
The prepare-release
script will trigger the builds via API calls.
To monitor the build progress, see the following pages:
- circleci.com/gh/electron/electron for OS X and Linux
- windows-ci.electronjs.org/project/AppVeyor/electron for Windows
Compile release notes
Writing release notes is a good way to keep yourself busy while the builds are running. For prior art, see existing releases on the releases page.
Tips:
- Each listed item should reference a PR on electron/electron, not an issue, nor a PR from another repo like libcc.
- No need to use link markup when referencing PRs. Strings like
#123
will automatically be converted to links on github.com. - To see the version of Chromium, V8, and Node in every version of Electron, visit atom.io/download/electron/index.json.
Patch releases
For a patch
release, use the following format:
## Bug Fixes
* Fixed a cross-platform thing. #123
### Linux
* Fixed a Linux thing. #123
### macOS
* Fixed a macOS thing. #123
### Windows
* Fixed a Windows thing. #1234
Minor releases
For a minor
release, e.g. 1.8.0
, use this format:
## Upgrades
- Upgraded from Node `oldVersion` to `newVersion`. #123
## API Changes
* Changed a thing. #123
### Linux
* Changed a Linux thing. #123
### macOS
* Changed a macOS thing. #123
### Windows
* Changed a Windows thing. #123
Major releases
## Upgrades
- Upgraded from Chromium `oldVersion` to `newVersion`. #123
- Upgraded from Node `oldVersion` to `newVersion`. #123
## Breaking API changes
* Changed a thing. #123
### Linux
* Changed a Linux thing. #123
### macOS
* Changed a macOS thing. #123
### Windows
* Changed a Windows thing. #123
## Other Changes
- Some other change. #123
Beta releases
Use the same formats as the ones suggested above, but add the following note at the beginning of the changelog:
**Note:** This is a beta release and most likely will have have some
instability and/or regressions.
Please file new issues for any bugs you find in it.
This release is published to [npm](https://www.npmjs.com/package/electron)
under the `beta` tag and can be installed via `npm install electron@beta`.
Edit the release draft
- Visit the releases page and you'll see a new draft release with placeholder release notes.
- Edit the release and add release notes.
- Uncheck the
prerelease
checkbox if you're publishing a stable release; leave it checked for beta releases. - Click 'Save draft'. Do not click 'Publish release'!
- Wait for all builds to pass before proceeding.
- In the
release
branch, verify that the release's files have been created:
$ git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD
release
$ npm run release -- --validateRelease
Merge temporary branch (pre-2-0-x branches only)
Once the release builds have finished, merge the release
branch back into
the source release branch using the merge-release
script.
If the branch cannot be successfully merged back this script will automatically
rebase the release
branch and push the changes which will trigger the release
builds again, which means you will need to wait for the release builds to run
again before proceeding.
Merging back into master
npm run merge-release -- master
Merging back into old release branch
npm run merge-release -- 1-7-x
Publish the release
Once the merge has finished successfully, run the release
script
via npm run release
to finish the release process. This script will do the
following:
- Build the project to validate that the correct version number is being released.
- Download the binaries and generate the node headers and the .lib linker used on Windows by node-gyp to build native modules.
- Create and upload the SHASUMS files stored on S3 for the node files.
- Create and upload the SHASUMS256.txt file stored on the GitHub release.
- Validate that all of the required files are present on GitHub and S3 and have the correct checksums as specified in the SHASUMS files.
- Publish the release on GitHub
- Delete the
release
branch.
Publish to npm
Before publishing to npm, you'll need to log into npm as Electron. Optionally, you may find npmrc to be a useful way to keep Electron's profile side-by-side with your own:
$ sudo npm install -g npmrc
$ npmrc -c electron
Removing old .npmrc (default)
Activating .npmrc "electron"
The Electron account's credentials are kept by GitHub. "Electron - NPM" for the URL "https://www.npmjs.com/login".
$ npm login
Username: electron
Password:
Email: (this IS public) electron@github.com
Publish the release to npm.
$ npm whoami
electron
$ npm run publish-to-npm
Note: In general you should be using the latest Node during this
process; however, older versions of the publish-to-npm
script
may have trouble with Node 7 or higher. If you have trouble with
this in an older branch, try running with an older version of Node,
e.g. a 6.x LTS.
Fix missing binaries of a release manually
In the case of a corrupted release with broken CI machines, we might have to re-upload the binaries for an already published release.
The first step is to go to the
Releases page and delete the
corrupted binaries with the SHASUMS256.txt
checksum file.
Then manually create distributions for each platform and upload them:
# Checkout the version to re-upload.
git checkout vTHE.RELEASE.VERSION
# Do release build, specifying one target architecture.
./script/bootstrap.py --target_arch [arm|x64|ia32]
./script/build.py -c R
./script/create-dist.py
# Explicitly allow overwritting a published release.
./script/upload.py --overwrite
After re-uploading all distributions, publish again to upload the checksum file:
npm run release