Releasing

This document describes the process for releasing a new version of Electron.

Compile release notes

The current process is to maintain a local file, keeping track of notable changes as pull requests are merged. For examples of how to format the notes, see previous releases on the releases page.

Create a temporary branch (optional)

If there is any change to the build configuration, use a temporary branch with any name (e.g. release). Otherwise you can use master.

Bump the version

Run the bump-release script, passing major, minor, or patch as an argument:

npm run bump-release -- patch

This will bump the version number in a number of files. See this bump commit for an example.

Most releases will be patch-level. Upgrades to Chrome or other major changes should use minor. For more info, see electron-versioning.

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.
Click 'Save draft'. Do not click 'Publish release'!
Wait for all the builds to pass. ⏳

Merge temporary branch

If you created a temporary release branch, merge it back into master, without creating a merge commit:

git merge release master --no-commit

Run local debug build

Run local debug build to verify that you are actually building the version you want. Sometimes you thought you were doing a release for a new version, but you're actually not.

npm run build
npm start

Verify the window is displaying the current updated version.

Publish the release

This script will download the binaries and generate the node headers and the .lib linker used on Windows by node-gyp to build native modules.

npm run release

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