Ceph » Stable releases

h3. Introduction

Backporting and the maintenance of a stable release begins when a new "stable Ceph release":http://ceph.com/docs/master/releases is published. Commits from the master branch are cherry-picked to the stable branch and run through integration and upgrade tests. After a few weeks a "point release":http://ceph.com/docs/master/releases is published. This repeats until the "the stable release is retired":http://ceph.com/docs/master/releases. Backporting is focused on fixing bugs and development on the master branch is expected to add new features but both share the "same workflow":http://ceph.com/docs/master/dev/development-workflow/.

h3. Overview of the backports in progress

* *infernalis* 

** "complete":http://tracker.ceph.com/versions/507

** "backport status":http://tracker.ceph.com/issues/13750

** "backports":http://tracker.ceph.com/projects/ceph/issues?query_id=82

** "pending issues":http://tracker.ceph.com/projects/ceph/issues?query_id=83

** "pull requests":https://github.com/ceph/ceph/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr+milestone%3Ainfernalis

* *hammer* 

** "complete":http://tracker.ceph.com/versions/511

** "backport status":http://tracker.ceph.com/issues/14692

** "backports":http://tracker.ceph.com/projects/ceph/issues?query_id=78 

** "pending issues":http://tracker.ceph.com/projects/ceph/issues?query_id=77 

** "pull requests":https://github.com/ceph/ceph/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr+milestone%3Ahammer

h3. Leads

* Ceph : Sage Weil

* rados : Samuel Just

* radosgw / rgw : Yehuda Sadeh

* CephFS / fs : Gregory Farnum

* RBD : Jason Dillaman

* build/ops : Ken Dreyer

Note: It may be useful to know the leads of other projects which have a different lifecycle but depend on Ceph.

h3. Who's who

Members of the "stable releases team":http://tracker.ceph.com/projects/ceph-releases are assigned the following roles as of February, 2016.

|                      | v0.94.7 |  v9.2.1  |  v9.2.2  | v10.2.0  |

| Abhishek Lekshmanan  |         | backup   |          | backup   |

| Abhishek Varshney    |         | driver   |          | driver   |

| Nathan Cutler        | driver  |          |          |          |

| Loic Dachary         | backup  | backup   | backup   | backup   |

| Xiaoxi Chen          | mentee  |          |          |          |

| M Ranga Swami Reddy  | mentee  | mentee   | driver   |          |

| Gaurav Bafna         |         |          |          |          |

| Wei-Chung Cheng      |         |          |          |          |

| Martin Palma         |         |          |          |          |

| Chris Jones          |         |          |          |          |

* Mentee: during the course of a release the driver is available to help understand the stable release workflow

* Driver: responsible for making sure the release is moving forward

* Backup: helps the driver and replaces her/him when she/he is not available

* Sage Weil, Samuel Just, Yehuda Sadeh, Gregory Farnum, Josh Durgin, Ken Dreyer : leads

h3. HOWTO

The following describes in detail and in chronological order, the steps to follow for backporting and maintaining stable releases.

h4. Add a new stable release

* [[HOWTO start backporting a stable release]]

h4. Add a new point release

* [[HOWTO start working on a new point release]]

h4. Prepare a new point release

# [[HOWTO monitor the automated tests AKA nightlies]]

# [[HOWTO schedule an issue for backporting]]

# [[HOWTO document user visible changes]]

# [[HOWTO backport commits]]

# [[HOWTO populate the integration branch]]

# [[HOWTO run integration and upgrade tests]]

# [[HOWTO forensic analysis of integration and upgrade tests]]

# [[HOWTO describe a test result]]

# [[HOWTO merge commits from the integration branch]]

# [[HOWTO synchronize pull requests from different repositories]]

# [[HOWTO resolve issues that are Pending Backport]]

# [[HOWTO get the Ceph lead to decide if it is time for a point release]]

# [[HOWTO get the leads to sign-off on a release]]

# [[HOWTO write the release notes]]

h4. Publish a stable release

* Study https://github.com/ceph/ceph-build/ and http://jenkins.ceph.com/ to figure out how it is used to update http://ceph.com/debian-hammer/ and http://ceph.com/rpm-hammer/ 

* The jenkins job is http://jenkins.ceph.com/job/ceph/ and requires some setup

* A jenkins job does a bunch of things like "changing version numbers, creating a tag and pushing to the Jenkins GIT repository":https://github.com/ceph/ceph-build/blob/master/ceph/config/definitions/ceph.yml

* Once that process completes the binaries are HTTP POSTed to chacra.ceph.com following the "convention in the chacra docs":https://github.com/ceph/chacra#chacra

* Once those are there, Alfredo, ssh into signer.ceph.com pull the binaries from chacra, sign them and upload them into download.ceph.com

* The entire procedure is explained in a document that has not yet been released (Feb 2016).

h4. Retire a stable release

* [[HOWTO retire a stable release]]

h4. Recurring duties expected from backporters

* [[HOWTO triage incoming backport pull requests]]

* [[HOWTO triage incoming Pending backport issues]]

* "fill in the missing releases":http://tracker.ceph.com/projects/ceph/issues?query_id=84

h4. Organize the stable releases and backports team

* [[HOWTO become a new team member]]

* [[HOWTO retire from the team]]