Abstract

Making a Python release is a thrilling and crazy process. You’ve heard the expression “herding cats”? Imagine trying to also saddle those purring little creatures up, and ride them into town, with some of their buddies firmly attached to your bare back, anchored by newly sharpened claws. At least they’re cute, you remind yourself.

Actually, no that’s a slight exaggeration <wink>. The Python release process has steadily improved over the years and now, with the help of our amazing community, is really not too difficult. This PEP attempts to collect, in one place, all the steps needed to make a Python release. It is organized as a recipe and you can actually print this out and check items off as you complete them.

Things You’ll Need

As a release manager there are a lot of resources you’ll need to access. Here’s a hopefully-complete list.

• A GPG key.

  Python releases are digitally signed with GPG; you’ll need a key, which hopefully will be on the “web of trust” with at least one of the other release managers.

• A bunch of software:
  • “release.py”, the Python release manager’s friend. It’s in the python/release-tools repo on GitHub. It doesn’t pip install or have any sort of install process–you’ll have to put it on your path yourself, or just run it with a relative path, or whatever.
  • “blurb”, the Misc/NEWS management tool. The release process currently uses three blurb subcommands: release, merge, and export. Installable via pip3.
  • “virtualenv”. The release script installs Sphinx in a virtualenv when building the docs (for 2.7 and 3.5+).
  • A fairly complete installation of a recent TeX distribution, such as texlive. You need that for building the PDF docs.
• Access to downloads.nyc1.psf.io, the server that hosts download files, and docs.nyc1.psf.io, the server that hosts the documentation. You’ll be uploading files directly here.
• Administrator access to https://github.com/python/cpython.
• An administrator account on www.python.org, including an “API key”.
• Write access to the PEP repository.

  If you’re reading this, you probably already have this–the first task of any release manager is to draft the release schedule. But in case you just signed up… sucker! I mean, uh, congratulations!

• Posting access to http://blog.python.org, a Blogger-hosted weblog. The RSS feed from this blog is used for the ‘Python News’ section on www.python.org.
• A subscription to the super secret release manager mailing list, which may or may not be called python-cabal. Bug Barry about this.

Types of Releases

There are several types of releases you will need to make. These include:

• alpha
• beta
• release candidate 1
• release candidate 2+
• final
• new branch
• begin bugfix mode
• begin security-only mode
• end-of-life

Some of these release types actually involve more than one release branch. In particular, a new branch is that point in the release cycle when a new feature release cycle begins. Under the current organization of the cpython git repository, the main branch is always the target for new features. At some point in the release cycle of the next feature release, a new branch release is made which creates a new separate branch for stabilization and later maintenance of the current in-progress feature release (x.y.0) and the main branch is modified to build a new version (which will eventually be released as x.y+1.0). While the new branch release step could occur at one of several points in the release cycle, current practice is for it to occur at feature code cutoff for the release which is scheduled for the first beta release.

In the descriptions that follow, steps specific to release types are labeled accordingly, for now, new branch and final.

How to Make A Release

Here are the steps taken to make a Python release. Some steps are more fuzzy than others because there’s little that can be automated (e.g. writing the NEWS entries). Where a step is usually performed by An Expert, the role of that expert is given. Otherwise, assume the step is done by the Release Manager (RM), the designated person performing the release. The roles and their current experts are:

• RM = Release Manager

  • Łukasz Langa <lukasz@python.org> (Central Europe)
  • Ned Deily <nad@python.org> (US)
  • Pablo Galindo Salgado <pablogsal@python.org> (UK)

• WE = Windows - Steve Dower <steve.dower@python.org>
• ME = Mac - Ned Deily <nad@python.org> (US)
• DE = Docs - Julien Palard <julien@python.org> (Central Europe)
• IE = Idle Expert - Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> (US)

  Note

  It is highly recommended that the RM contact the Experts the day before the release. Because the world is round and everyone lives in different timezones, the RM must ensure that the release tag is created in enough time for the Experts to cut binary releases.

  You should not make the release public (by updating the website and sending announcements) before all experts have updated their bits. In rare cases where the expert for Windows or Mac is MIA, you may add a message “(Platform) binaries will be provided shortly” and proceed.

XXX: We should include a dependency graph to illustrate the steps that can be taken in parallel, or those that depend on other steps.

As much as possible, the release steps are automated and guided by the release script, which is available in a separate repository:

https://github.com/python/release-tools

We use the following conventions in the examples below. Where a release number is given, it is of the form X.Y.ZaN, e.g. 3.3.0a3 for Python 3.3.0 alpha 3, where “a” == alpha, “b” == beta, “rc” == release candidate.

Release tags are named vX.Y.ZaN. The branch name for minor release maintenance branches is X.Y.

This helps by performing several automatic editing steps, and guides you to perform some manual editing steps.

• Log into irc.libera.chat and join the #python-dev channel.

  You probably need to coordinate with other people around the world. This IRC channel is where we’ve arranged to meet.

• Check to see if there are any showstopper bugs.

  Go to https://bugs.python.org and look for any open bugs that can block this release. You’re looking at the Priority of the open bugs for the release you’re making; here are the relevant definitions:

  release blocker

  Stops the release dead in its tracks. You may not make any release with any open release blocker bugs.

  deferred blocker

  Doesn’t block this release, but it will block a future release. You may not make a final or candidate release with any open deferred blocker bugs.

  critical

  Important bugs that should be fixed, but which does not block a release.

  Review the release blockers and either resolve them, bump them down to deferred, or stop the release and ask for community assistance. If you’re making a final or candidate release, do the same with any open deferred.

• Check the stable buildbots.

  Go to https://buildbot.python.org/all/#/release_status

  Look at the buildbots for the release you’re making. Ignore any that are offline (or inform the community so they can be restarted). If what remains are (mostly) green buildbots, you’re good to go. If you have non-offline red buildbots, you may want to hold up the release until they are fixed. Review the problems and use your judgement, taking into account whether you are making an alpha, beta, or final release.

• Make a release clone.

  On a fork of the cpython repository on GitHub, create a release branch within it (called the “release clone” from now on). You can use the same GitHub fork you use for cpython development. Using the standard setup recommended in the Python Developer’s Guide, your fork would be referred to as origin and the standard cpython repo as upstream. You will use the branch on your fork to do the release engineering work, including tagging the release, and you will use it to share with the other experts for making the binaries.

  For a final or release candidate 2+ release, if you are going to cherry-pick a subset of changes for the next rc or final from all those merged since the last rc, you should create a release engineering branch starting from the most recent release candidate tag, i.e. v3.8.0rc1. You will then cherry-pick changes from the standard release branch as necessary into the release engineering branch and then proceed as usual. If you are going to take all of the changes since the previous rc, you can proceed as normal.

• Make sure the current branch of your release clone is the branch you want to release from. (git status)
• Run blurb release <version> specifying the version number (e.g. blurb release 3.4.7rc1). This merges all the recent news blurbs into a single file marked with this release’s version number.
• Regenerate Lib/pydoc-topics.py.

  While still in the Doc directory, run make pydoc-topics. Then copy build/pydoc-topics/topics.py to ../Lib/pydoc_data/topics.py.

• Commit your changes to pydoc_topics.py (and any fixes you made in the docs).
• Consider running autoconf using the currently accepted standard version in case configure or other autoconf-generated files were last committed with a newer or older version and may contain spurious or harmful differences. Currently, autoconf 2.69 is our de facto standard. if there are differences, commit them.
• Make sure the SOURCE_URI in Doc/tools/extensions/pyspecific.py points to the right branch in the git repository (main or X.Y). For a new branch release, change the branch in the file from main to the new release branch you are about to create (X.Y).
• Bump version numbers via the release script:

  $ .../release-tools/release.py --bump X.Y.ZaN
  

  Reminder: X, Y, Z, and N should be integers. a should be one of “a”, “b”, or “rc” (e.g. “3.4.3rc1”). For final releases omit the aN (“3.4.3”). For the first release of a new version Z should be 0 (“3.6.0”).

  This automates updating various release numbers, but you will have to modify a few files manually. If your $EDITOR environment variable is set up correctly, release.py will pop up editor windows with the files you need to edit.

  Review the blurb-generated Misc/NEWS file and edit as necessary.

• Make sure all changes have been committed. (release.py --bump doesn’t check in its changes for you.)
• Check the years on the copyright notice. If the last release was some time last year, add the current year to the copyright notice in several places:
  • README
  • LICENSE (make sure to change on trunk and the branch)
  • Python/getcopyright.c
  • Doc/copyright.rst
  • Doc/license.rst
  • PC/python_ver_rc.h sets up the DLL version resource for Windows (displayed when you right-click on the DLL and select Properties). This isn’t a C include file, it’s a Windows “resource file” include file.
• Check with the IE (if there is one <wink>) to be sure that Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt has been similarly updated.
• For a final major release, edit the first paragraph of Doc/whatsnew/X.Y.rst to include the actual release date; e.g. “Python 2.5 was released on August 1, 2003.” There’s no need to edit this for alpha or beta releases.
• Do a “git status” in this directory.

  You should not see any files. I.e. you better not have any uncommitted changes in your working directory.

• Tag the release for X.Y.ZaN:

  $ .../release-tools/release.py --tag X.Y.ZaN
  

  This executes a git tag command with the -s option so that the release tag in the repo is signed with your gpg key. When prompted choose the private key you use for signing release tarballs etc.

• For a new branch release, add it to the VERSIONS list of docsbuild scripts, so that the new maintenance branch is now pre-release and add the new in development version.
• For a final major release, update the VERSIONS list of docsbuild scripts: the release branch must be changed from pre-release to stable.
• For begin security-only mode and end-of-life releases, review the two files and update the versions accordingly in all active branches.
• Time to build the source tarball. Use the release script to create the source gzip and xz tarballs, documentation tar and zip files, and gpg signature files:

  $ .../release-tools/release.py --export X.Y.ZaN
  

  This can take a while for final releases, and it will leave all the tarballs and signatures in a subdirectory called X.Y.ZaN/src, and the built docs in X.Y.ZaN/docs (for final releases).

• Now you want to perform the very important step of checking the tarball you just created, to make sure a completely clean, virgin build passes the regression test. Here are the best steps to take:

  $ cd /tmp
  $ tar xvf /path/to/your/release/clone/<version>//Python-3.2rc2.tgz
  $ cd Python-3.2rc2
  $ ls
  (Do things look reasonable?)
  $ ls Lib
  (Are there stray .pyc files?)
  $ ./configure
  (Loads of configure output)
  $ make test
  (Do all the expected tests pass?)
  

  If you’re feeling lucky and have some time to kill, or if you are making a release candidate or final release, run the full test suite:

  $ make testall
  

  If the tests pass, then you can feel good that the tarball is fine. If some of the tests fail, or anything else about the freshly unpacked directory looks weird, you better stop now and figure out what the problem is.

• Push your commits to the remote release branch in your GitHub fork.:

  # Do a dry run first.
  $ git push --dry-run --tags origin
  # Make sure you are pushing to your GitHub fork, *not* to the main
  # python/cpython repo!
  $ git push --tags origin
  

• Notify the experts that they can start building binaries.
• STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP

  At this point you must receive the “green light” from other experts in order to create the release. There are things you can do while you wait though, so keep reading until you hit the next STOP.

• The WE generates and publishes the Windows files using the Azure Pipelines build scripts in .azure-pipelines/windows-release/, currently set up at https://dev.azure.com/Python/cpython/_build?definitionId=21.

  Note that this build requires a separate VM containing the code signing certificate. This VM is managed by the WE to ensure only official releases have access to the certificate.

  The build process runs in multiple stages, with each stage’s output being available as a downloadable artifact. The stages are:

  • Compile all variants of binaries (32-bit, 64-bit, debug/release), including running profile-guided optimization.
  • Compile the HTML Help file containing the Python documentation
  • Codesign all the binaries with the PSF’s certificate
  • Create packages for python.org, nuget.org, the embeddable distro and the Windows Store
  • Perform basic verification of the installers
  • Upload packages to python.org and nuget.org, purge download caches and run a test download.

  After the uploads are complete, the WE copies the generated hashes from the build logs and emails them to the RM. The Windows Store packages are uploaded manually to https://partner.microsoft.com/dashboard/home by the WE.

• The ME builds Mac installer packages and uploads them to downloads.nyc1.psf.io together with gpg signature files.
• scp or rsync all the files built by release.py --export to your home directory on downloads.nyc1.psf.io.

  While you’re waiting for the files to finish uploading, you can continue on with the remaining tasks. You can also ask folks on #python-dev and/or python-committers to download the files as they finish uploading so that they can test them on their platforms as well.

• Now you need to go to downloads.nyc1.psf.io and move all the files in place over there. Our policy is that every Python version gets its own directory, but each directory contains all releases of that version.
  • On downloads.nyc1.psf.io, cd /srv/www.python.org/ftp/python/X.Y.Z creating it if necessary. Make sure it is owned by group ‘downloads’ and group-writable.
  • Move the release .tgz, and .tar.xz files into place, as well as the .asc GPG signature files. The Win/Mac binaries are usually put there by the experts themselves.

    Make sure they are world readable. They should also be group writable, and group-owned by downloads.

  • Use gpg --verify to make sure they got uploaded intact.
  • If this is a final or rc release: Move the doc zips and tarballs to /srv/www.python.org/ftp/python/doc/X.Y.Z[rcA], creating the directory if necessary, and adapt the “current” symlink in .../doc to point to that directory. Note though that if you’re releasing a maintenance release for an older version, don’t change the current link.
  • If this is a final or rc release (even a maintenance release), also unpack the HTML docs to /srv/docs.python.org/release/X.Y.Z[rcA] on docs.nyc1.psf.io. Make sure the files are in group docs and are group-writeable. If it is a release of a security-fix-only version, tell the DE to start a build (security-fixes and EOL version are not built daily).
  • Let the DE check if the docs are built and work all right.
  • If this is a final major release: Tell the DE to adapt redirects for docs.python.org/X.Y in the nginx config for docs.python.org.
  • Note both the documentation and downloads are behind a caching CDN. If you change archives after downloading them through the website, you’ll need to purge the stale data in the CDN like this:

    $ curl -X PURGE https://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.5/Python-2.7.5.tar.xz
    

    You should always purge the cache of the directory listing as people use that to browse the release files:

    $ curl -X PURGE https://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.5/
    

• For the extra paranoid, do a completely clean test of the release. This includes downloading the tarball from www.python.org.

  Make sure the md5 checksums match. Then unpack the tarball, and do a clean make test.:

  $ make distclean
  $ ./configure
  $ make test
  

  To ensure that the regression test suite passes. If not, you screwed up somewhere!

• STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP
  • Have you gotten the green light from the WE?
  • Have you gotten the green light from the ME?
  • Have you gotten the green light from the DE?

If green, it’s time to merge the release engineering branch back into the main repo.

• In order to push your changes to Github, you’ll have to temporarily disable branch protection for administrators. Go to the Settings | Branches page:

  https://github.com/python/cpython/settings/branches/

  “Edit” the settings for the branch you’re releasing on. This will load the settings page for that branch. Uncheck the “Include administrators” box and press the “Save changes” button at the bottom.

• Merge your release clone into the main development repo:

  # Pristine copy of the upstream repo branch
  $ git clone [email protected]:python/cpython.git merge
  $ cd merge
  
  # Checkout the correct branch:
  # 1. For feature pre-releases up to and including a
  #    **new branch** release, i.e. alphas and first beta
  #   do a checkout of the main branch
  $ git checkout main
  
  # 2. Else, for all other releases, checkout the
  #       appropriate release branch.
  $ git checkout X.Y
  
  # Fetch the newly created and signed tag from your clone repo
  $ git fetch --tags [email protected]:your-github-id/cpython.git vX.Y.ZaN
  # Merge the temporary release engineering branch back into
  $ git merge --no-squash vX.Y.ZaN
  $ git commit -m 'Merge release engineering branch'
  

• If this is a new branch release, i.e. first beta, now create the new release branch:

  $ git checkout -b X.Y
  

  Do any steps needed to setup the new release branch, including:

  • In README.rst, change all references from main to the new branch, in particular, GitHub repo URLs.

• For all releases, do the guided post-release steps with the release script.:

  $ .../release-tools/release.py --done X.Y.ZaN
  

• For a final or release candidate 2+ release, you may need to do some post-merge cleanup. Check the top-level README.rst and include/patchlevel.h files to ensure they now reflect the desired post-release values for on-going development. The patchlevel should be the release tag with a +. Also, if you cherry-picked changes from the standard release branch into the release engineering branch for this release, you will now need to manual remove each blurb entry from the Misc/NEWS.d/next directory that was cherry-picked into the release you are working on since that blurb entry is now captured in the merged x.y.z.rst file for the new release. Otherwise, the blurb entry will appear twice in the changelog.html file, once under Python next and again under x.y.z.
• Review and commit these changes:

  $ git commit -m 'Post release updates'
  

• If this is a new branch release (e.g. the first beta), update the main branch to start development for the following feature release. When finished, the main branch will now build Python X.Y+1.
  • First, set main up to be the next release, i.e.X.Y+1.a0:

    $ git checkout main
    $ .../release-tools/release.py --bump 3.9.0a0
    

  • Edit all version references in README.rst
  • Move any historical “what’s new” entries from Misc/NEWS to Misc/HISTORY.
  • Edit Doc/tutorial/interpreter.rst (2 references to ‘[Pp]ython3x’, one to ‘Python 3.x’, also make the date in the banner consistent).
  • Edit Doc/tutorial/stdlib.rst and Doc/tutorial/stdlib2.rst, which have each one reference to ‘[Pp]ython3x’.
  • Add a new whatsnew/3.x.rst file (with the comment near the top and the toplevel sections copied from the previous file) and add it to the toctree in whatsnew/index.rst. But beware that the initial whatsnew/3.x.rst checkin from previous releases may be incorrect due to the initial midstream change to blurb that propagates from release to release! Help break the cycle: if necessary make the following change:

    - For full details, see the :source:`Misc/NEWS` file.
    + For full details, see the :ref:`changelog <changelog>`.
    

  • Update the version number in configure.ac and re-run autoconf.
  • Make sure the SOURCE_URI in Doc/tools/extensions/pyspecific.py points to main.
  • Update the version numbers for the Windows builds in PC/ and PCbuild/, which have references to python38. NOTE, check with Steve Dower about this step, it is probably obsolete.:

    $ find PC/ PCbuild/ -type f | xargs sed -i 's/python38/python39/g'
    $ git mv -f PC/os2emx/python38.def PC/os2emx/python39.def
    $ git mv -f PC/python38stub.def PC/python39stub.def
    $ git mv -f PC/python38gen.py PC/python39gen.py
    

  • Commit these changes to the main branch:

    $ git status
    $ git add ...
    $ git commit -m 'Bump to 3.9.0a0'
    

• Do another git status in this directory.

  You should not see any files. I.e. you better not have any uncommitted changes in your working directory.

• Commit and push to the main repo.:

  # Do a dry run first.
  
  # For feature pre-releases prior to a **new branch** release,
  #   i.e. a feature alpha release:
  $ git push --dry-run --tags  [email protected]:python/cpython.git main
  # If it looks OK, take the plunge.  There's no going back!
  $ git push --tags  [email protected]:python/cpython.git main
  
  # For a **new branch** release, i.e. first beta:
  $ git push --dry-run --tags  [email protected]:python/cpython.git X.Y
  $ git push --dry-run --tags  [email protected]:python/cpython.git main
  # If it looks OK, take the plunge.  There's no going back!
  $ git push --tags  [email protected]:python/cpython.git X.Y
  $ git push --tags  [email protected]:python/cpython.git main
  
  # For all other releases:
  $ git push --dry-run --tags  [email protected]:python/cpython.git X.Y
  # If it looks OK, take the plunge.  There's no going back!
  $ git push --tags  [email protected]:python/cpython.git X.Y
  

• If this is a new branch release, add a Branch protection rule for the newly created branch (X.Y). Look at the values for the previous release branch (X.Y-1) and use them as a template. https://github.com/python/cpython/settings/branches/

  Also, add a needs backport to X.Y label to the Github repo. https://github.com/python/cpython/labels

• You can now re-enable enforcement of branch settings against administrators on Github. Go back to the Settings | Branch page:

  https://github.com/python/cpython/settings/branches/

  “Edit” the settings for the branch you’re releasing on. Re-check the “Include administrators” box and press the “Save changes” button at the bottom.

Now it’s time to twiddle the web site. Almost none of this is automated, sorry.

To do these steps, you must have the permission to edit the website. If you don’t have that, ask someone on pydotorg@python.org for the proper permissions. (Or ask Ewa, who coordinated the effort for the new website with RevSys.)

• Log in to https://www.python.org/admin .
• Create a new “release” for the release. Currently “Releases” are sorted under “Downloads”.

  The easiest thing is probably to copy fields from an existing Python release “page”, editing as you go.

  You can use Markdown or ReStructured Text to describe your release. The former is less verbose, while the latter has nifty integration for things like referencing PEPs.

  Leave the “Release page” field on the form empty.

• “Save” the release.
• Populate the release with the downloadable files.

  Your friend and mine, Georg Brandl, made a lovely tool called “add-to-pydotorg.py”. You can find it in the “release” tree (next to “release.py”). You run the tool on downloads.nyc1.psf.io, like this:

  $ AUTH_INFO=<username>:<python.org-api-key> python add-to-pydotorg.py <version>
  

  This walks the correct download directory for <version>, looks for files marked with <version>, and populates the “Release Files” for the correct “release” on the web site with these files. Note that clears the “Release Files” for the relevant version each time it’s run. You may run it from any directory you like, and you can run it as many times as you like if the files happen to change. Keep a copy in your home directory on dl-files and keep it fresh.

  If new types of files are added to the release (e.g. the web-based installers or redistributable zip files added to Python 3.5) someone will need to update add-to-pydotorg.py so it recognizes these new files. (It’s best to update add-to-pydotorg.py when file types are removed, too.)

• In case the CDN already cached a version of the Downloads page without the files present, you can invalidate the cache using:

  $ curl -X PURGE https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-XXX/
  

• If this is a final release:
  • Add the new version to the Python Documentation by Version page https://www.python.org/doc/versions/ and remove the current version from any ‘in development’ section.
  • For X.Y.Z, edit all the previous X.Y releases’ page(s) to point to the new release. This includes the content field of the Downloads -> Releases entry for the release:

    Note: Python x.y.m has been superseded by
    `Python x.y.n </downloads/release/python-xyn/>`_.
    

    And, for those releases having separate release page entries (phasing these out?), update those pages as well, e.g. download/releases/x.y.z:

    Note: Python x.y.m has been superseded by
    `Python x.y.n </download/releases/x.y.n/>`_.
    

  • Update the “Current Pre-release Testing Versions web page”.

    There’s a page that lists all the currently-in-testing versions of Python:

    https://www.python.org/download/pre-releases/

    Every time you make a release, one way or another you’ll have to update this page:

    • If you’re releasing a version before x.y.0, or x.y.z release candidate N, you should add it to this page, removing the previous pre-release of version x.y as needed.
    • If you’re releasing x.y.z final, you need to remove the pre-release version from this page.

    This is in the “Pages” category on the Django-based website, and finding it through that UI is kind of a chore. However! If you’re already logged in to the admin interface (which, at this point, you should be), Django will helpfully add a convenient “Edit this page” link to the top of the page itself. So you can simply follow the link above, click on the “Edit this page” link, and make your changes as needed. How convenient!

  • If appropriate, update the “Python Documentation by Version” page:

    https://www.python.org/doc/versions/

    This lists all releases of Python by version number and links to their static (not built daily) online documentation. There’s a list at the bottom of in-development versions, which is where all alphas/betas/RCs should go. And yes you should be able to click on the link above then press the shiny, exciting “Edit this page” button.

  • Other steps (other update for new web site)??
• Write the announcement for the mailing lists. This is the fuzzy bit because not much can be automated. You can use an earlier announcement as a template, but edit it for content!
• Once the announcement is ready, send it to the following addresses:

  python-list@python.org python-announce@python.org python-dev@python.org

• Also post the announcement to The Python Insider blog. To add a new entry, go to your Blogger home page, here.
• Send email to python-committers informing them that the release has been published and a reminder about any relevant changes in policy based on the phase of the release cycle. In particular, if this is a new branch release, remind everyone that the new release branch exists and that they need to start considering whether to backport to it when merging changes to main.
• Update any release PEPs (e.g. 361) with the release dates.
• Update the tracker at https://bugs.python.org:
  • Flip all the deferred blocker issues back to release blocker for the next release.
  • Add version X.Y+1 as when version X.Y enters alpha.
  • Change non-doc RFEs to version X.Y+1 when version X.Y enters beta.
  • Add X.Yregression keyword (https://bugs.python.org/keyword) when version X.Y enters beta.
  • Update ‘behavior’ issues from versions that your release make unsupported to the next supported version.
  • Review open issues, as this might find lurking showstopper bugs, besides reminding people to fix the easy ones they forgot about.
• You can delete the remote release clone branch from your repo clone.
• If this is a new branch release, you will need to ensure various pieces of the development infrastructure are updated for the new branch. These include:
  • Update the issue tracker for the new branch.

    • Add the new version to the versions list (contact the tracker admins?).
    • Add a regressions keyword for the release

  • Update the devguide to reflect the new branches and versions.
  • Create a PR to update the supported releases table on the downloads page. (See https://github.com/python/pythondotorg/issues/1302)
  • Ensure buildbots are defined for the new branch (contact zware).
  • Ensure the daily docs build scripts are updated to include the new branch (contact DE).
  • Ensure the various Github bots are updated, as needed, for the new branch, in particular, make sure backporting to the new branch works (contact core-workflow team) https://github.com/python/core-workflow/issues
  • Review the most recent commit history for the main and new release branches to identify and backport any merges that might have been made to the main branch during the release engineering phase and that should be in the release branch.
  • Verify that CI is working for new PRs for the main and new release branches and that the release branch is properly protected (no direct pushes, etc).
  • Verify that the on-line docs are building properly (this may take up to 24 hours for a complete build on the web site).

What Next?

• Verify! Pretend you’re a user: download the files from python.org, and make Python from it. This step is too easy to overlook, and on several occasions we’ve had useless release files. Once a general server problem caused mysterious corruption of all files; once the source tarball got built incorrectly; more than once the file upload process on SF truncated files; and so on.
• Rejoice. Drink. Be Merry. Write a PEP like this one. Or be like unto Guido and take A Vacation.

You’ve just made a Python release!

Moving to End-of-life

Under current policy, a release branch normally reaches end-of-life status 5 years after its initial release. The policy is discussed in more detail in the Python Developer’s Guide. When end-of-life is reached, there are a number of tasks that need to be performed either directly by you as release manager or by ensuring someone else does them. Some of those tasks include:

• Optionally making a final release to publish any remaining unreleased changes.
• Update the VERSIONS list of docsbuild scripts: change the version state to EOL.
• On the docs download server (docs.nyc1.psf.io), ensure the top-level symlink points to the upload of unpacked html docs from final release:

  cd /srv/docs.python.org
  ls -l 3.3
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 nad docs 13 Sep  6 21:38 3.3 -> release/3.3.7
  

• Freeze the state of the release branch by creating a tag of its current HEAD and then deleting the branch from the cpython repo. The current HEAD should be at or beyond the final security release for the branch:

  git fetch upstream
  git tag --sign -m 'Final head of the former 3.3 branch' 3.3 upstream/3.3
  git push upstream refs/tags/3.3
  

• If all looks good, delete the branch. This may require the assistance of someone with repo administrator privileges:

  git push upstream --delete 3.3  # or perform from Github Settings page
  

• Remove the release from the list of “Active Python Releases” on the Downloads page. To do this, log in to the admin page for python.org, navigate to Boxes, and edit the downloads-active-releases entry. Simply strip out the relevant paragraph of HTML for your release. (You’ll probably have to do the curl -X PURGE trick to purge the cache if you want to confirm you made the change correctly.)
• Add retired notice to each release page on python.org for the retired branch. For example:

  https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-337/

  https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-336/

• In the developer’s guide, add the branch to the recent end-of-life branches list (https://devguide.python.org/devcycle/#end-of-life-branches) and update or remove references to the branch elsewhere in the devguide.
• Retire the release from the bugs.python.org issue tracker. Tasks include:

  • remove branch from tracker list of versions
  • remove any release-release keywords (3.3regressions)
  • review and dispose of open issues marked for this branch

  Note, with the likely future migration of bug tracking from the current Roundup bugs.python.org to Github issues and with the impending end-of-life of Python 2.7, it probably makes sense to avoid unnecessary churn for currently and about-to-be retired 3.x branches by deferring any major wholesale changes to existing issues until the migration process is clarified.

  In practice, you’re probably not going to do this yourself, you’re going to ask one of the bpo maintainers to do it for you (e.g. Ezio Melotti, Zachary Ware.)

• Announce the branch retirement in the usual places:

  • mailing lists (python-committers, python-dev, python-list, python-announcements)
  • discuss.python.org and Zulip
  • Python Dev blog

• Enjoy your retirement and bask in the glow of a job well done!

Windows Notes

NOTE, have Steve Dower review; probably obsolete.

Windows has a MSI installer, various flavors of Windows have “special limitations”, and the Windows installer also packs precompiled “foreign” binaries (Tcl/Tk, expat, etc). So Windows testing is tiresome but very necessary.

Concurrent with uploading the installer, the WE installs Python from it twice: once into the default directory suggested by the installer, and later into a directory with embedded spaces in its name. For each installation, the WE runs the full regression suite from a DOS box, and both with and without -0. For maintenance release, the WE also tests whether upgrade installations succeed.

The WE also tries every shortcut created under Start -> Menu -> the Python group. When trying IDLE this way, you need to verify that Help -> Python Documentation works. When trying pydoc this way (the “Module Docs” Start menu entry), make sure the “Start Browser” button works, and make sure you can search for a random module (like “random” <wink>) and then that the “go to selected” button works.

It’s amazing how much can go wrong here – and even more amazing how often last-second checkins break one of these things. If you’re “the Windows geek”, keep in mind that you’re likely the only person routinely testing on Windows, and that Windows is simply a mess.

Repeat the testing for each target architecture. Try both an Admin and a plain User (not Power User) account.

Copyright

This document has been placed in the public domain.