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

* *hammer* "backport status":http://tracker.ceph.com/issues/11990 and "backports":http://tracker.ceph.com/projects/ceph/issues?query_id=78 and "pending issues":http://tracker.ceph.com/projects/ceph/issues?query_id=77 and "pull requests":https://github.com/ceph/ceph/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr+milestone%3Ahammer

* *firefly* "backport status":http://tracker.ceph.com/issues/11090 and "backports":http://tracker.ceph.com/projects/ceph/issues?query_id=79 "pending issues":http://tracker.ceph.com/projects/ceph/issues?query_id=75 and "pull requests":https://github.com/ceph/ceph/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr+milestone%3Afirefly

h3. Leads

* Ceph : Sage Weil

* rados : Samuel Just

* radosgw / rgw : Yehuda Sadeh

* CephFS / fs : Gregory Farnum

* RBD : Josh Durgin

* 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. For instance  Gregory Meno is the lead of "Calamari":http://tracker.ceph.com/projects/calamari

h3. Who's who

Members of the "stable releases team":http://tracker.ceph.com/projects/ceph-releases are assigned the following roles as of July, 2015.

* Abhishek Lekshmanan : organizes the next hammer release

* David Casier : runs the hammer upgrade suite

* Nathan Cutler : organizes the next firefly release

* Loic Dachary : helps other team members, when asked to

* 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]] inline or [[HOWTO summarize test results]] in a separate issue

# [[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

* The "ceph-jenkins-build":https://github.com/alfredodeza/ceph-jenkins-build/tree/master/ceph ansible setup does a bunch of things like "changing version numbers, creating a tag and pushing to the Jenkins GIT repository":https://github.com/alfredodeza/ceph-jenkins-build/blob/master/ceph/tasks/setup.yml

* once that tag is created that can be used to trigger a build in the jenkins ui when the build is completed you are required to run a bunch of scripts in the jenkins server they sign and re-index the repositories and then synchronize them with ceph/(rpm|debian)-$release. Those scripts need to be edited by hand depending on the type of release and where you are pushing them to (e.g. testing vs firefly vs hammer)

* for hammer a new repository was created by hand and it is "documented as a script":https://gist.github.com/alfredodeza/b8f8b94ea795f1a7169b

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]]

Backporters currently performing these duties (remove yourself when on vacation etc.):

* Loic Dachary : weekly

* Nathan Cutler : weekly

* Abhishek L : weekly

h4. Organize the stable releases and backports team

* [[HOWTO become a new team member]]

* [[HOWTO retire from the team]]