MoarVM Release Guide

Versions

MoarVM currently has a monthly release cycle, with releases made in time for the month’s NQP and Rakudo release. Version numbers are simply YYYY.MM. For example, the January 2014 release is 2014.01. If any bugfix releases need to be made, they should be numbered as 2041.01.1, 2041.01.2, etc.

Making a release

  1. Make sure that you are on the MoarVM commit you want to make a release from, and that your status is clean.

  2. Ensure that NQP and Rakudo will build and that make test in each is clean. Also run make spectest in Rakudo; discuss any failures you see with the Rakudo developers.

  3. If possible, run NQP and Rakudo make test and Rakudo make spectest when #define MVM_DEBUG_NFG 1 and #define MVM_DEBUG_NFG_STRICT 1 in src/strings/ops.h after recompiling to make sure there have been no normalization bugs introduced.

  4. Update docs/ChangeLog with any significant changes since the previous release.

  5. Update the VERSION file with the release name.

  6. Run make release VERSION=2017.10, substituting the correct version name.

  7. Take the MoarVM-2017.10.tar.gz file generated by step 6, copy it to a separate directory, extract it, and then in that directory do:

     perl Configure.pl --prefix=install
     make install
     install/bin/moar --version
    
  8. Provided step 5 and 6 work, you have a release! You need to setup git to be able to sign your commits. The -a option adds a tag while the -s makes sure the tag is signed. Even if your commits are signed by default, you will need the -s option as well. Note: For the tag’s message, in the past we have used: ‘2018.05 release’. To see the past release messages use git tag -n9

     git tag -as 2017.10
    
  9. Run git verify-tag 2017.10 to make sure the signature is valid and the tag was actually signed.

  10. Run git push origin 2017.10 assuming the upstream remote is origin to push the tag. Also ensure you git push origin to push to the master branch as well.

  11. From here on this assumes you have the https://github.com/MoarVM/moarvm.org/ repository in the same folder as the main MoarVM repo

  12. Make sure you have the Text::Markdown Perl 5 module and run:

    ./tools/moarvm.org_releases.pl > ../moarvm.org/releases.html
    

It should output to STDERR all the versions it found in ChangeLog make sure the most recent release appears first and all releases going back to 2014.01 appear.

  1. Manually edit moarvm.org/index.html to have the DL link and mention the most recent release. Changes need to be made on lines:
  2. 36: Large text
  3. 38: Description text
  4. 41: Download link

  5. Create a gpg signature

     gpg --detach-sign --armor MoarVM-2018.04.tar.gz
    

Verify the signature: gpg –verify MoarVM-2018.04.tar.gz.asc

  1. Copy the tar.gz and the signature:

     cp MoarVM-2018.04.tar.gz MoarVM-2018.04.tar.gz.asc ../moarvm.org/releases
    
  2. Commit release to moarvm.org repo and check moarvm.org after 5-10 minutes and make sure download works. cd ../moarvm.org git add MoarVM-2018.04.tar.gz MoarVM-2018.tar.gz.asc git commit -m “Commit release 2018.08”

  3. Update MoarVM article on Wikipedia with the latest release https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoarVM

  4. Optionally, update the ports/macports/Portfile to reflect this latest version, and open a ticket at https://trac.macports.org/newticket to get the macport updated. (For now, just make Coke do it.)

  5. Do something fun to celebrate. Like watching nyan cat, or having a beer. Or why not both?