Nikola Release Checklist (v17/2024-07-24)

Requirements

In order to create a release, you need a bit of free time, ZSH installed, and a GPG setup.

Preparation

• If you have a local clone of the releng repo: git pull first, refresh the page if necessary
• Get into the Nikola repo, make sure you are on the master branch and run git pull origin master
• Pick a reasonable version number. Increase the last number (patch) or, if the changes really are significant, increase the second number (minor).

Writing announcements

All announcements must include the Greeting, What is Nikola?, Downloads, and Changes blocks, in that order. Use the announcements in the Release Engineering repo as a template.

You may also add a Key Changes since last release block after What is Nikola?.

• Write an announcement for GitHub Releases. It should use Markdown syntax and no word wrap.
• Write an announcement for e-mail. It should use reST-esque syntax, with word wrap at 70 columns.
• Write an announcement for the Nikola blog. Use nikola new_post -et "Nikola v$VERSION is out"'!' -i path/to/blog.rst --tags 'nikola, planet, python, programming, release' to import the announcement template (which you should then edit). Make sure to set the author name to your real name.

Release!

Run the release script and hope everything works fine:

• scripts/release

GitHub Releases

• Create a GitHub release for this version by running scripts/github-release.py (pass announcement filename and v$VERSION as arguments)
• Open the release page in your browser and upload the release assets (.tar.gz, .whl) and their signatures (.asc) for this version

GitHub Issues

• Create milestone for next release
• Move outstanding issues to milestone for next release
• Close milestone for this release

Local update

• Use pip install -e . to reinstall Nikola from Git in your virtualenv (if applicable)

Website update

• Optionally regenerate the cerulean theme: nikola subtheme -s cerulean -n cerulean
• Build and deploy the site
• Commit and push your changes to GitHub

E-mails

• Send the e-mail announcement to python-announce-list@python.org. You should sign it with GPG if possible.

Finishing up

• Give yourself a pat on the back!