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Release management

docs/release-management.md

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Release management

This document describes the release cycle, backports, versioning, and the release manager checklist. For everyday contribution workflow, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Backports and Frontports

What is backported?

We backport PRs given the following circumstances:

  1. Feature freeze is active, but <version>-rc0 has not been released yet. Here, we backport as much as possible. <!-- TODO: Is that our definition with the new backport bot? -->
  2. rc0 has been released. Here, we only backport bug- and security-fixes, and small enhancements. Large PRs such as refactors are not backported anymore. <!-- TODO: Is that our definition with the new backport bot? -->
  3. We never backport new features.
  4. We never backport breaking changes except when
    1. The breaking change has no effect on the vast majority of users
    2. The component triggering the breaking change is marked as experimental

How to backport?

In the past, it was necessary to manually backport your PRs.
Now, that's not a requirement anymore as our backport bot tries to create backports automatically once the PR is merged when the PR

  • does not have the label backport/manual
  • has the label backport/<version>

The backport/manual label signifies either that you want to backport the change yourself, or that there were conflicts when backporting, thus you must do it yourself.

Format of backport PRs

The title of backport PRs should be

<original PR title> (#<original pr number>)

The first two lines of the summary of the backporting PR should be

Backport #<original pr number>

with the rest of the summary and labels matching the original PR.

Frontports

Frontports behave exactly as described above for backports.

Release Cycle

We use a release schedule so work, stabilization, and releases stay predictable.

Cadence

  • Aim for a major release about every three or four months.
  • Roughly two or three months of general development, then about one month of testing and polish called the release freeze.
  • Starting with v1.26 the release cycle will be more predictable and follow a more regular schedule.

Release schedule

We will try to publish a new major version every three months:

  • v1.26.0 in April 2026
  • v1.27.0 in June 2026
  • v1.28.0 in September 2026
  • v1.29.0 in December 2026

How is the release handled?

  • The release manager will tag the release candidate (e.g. v1.26.0-rc0) and publish it for testing in the first week of the release month.
  • If there are no major issues, the release manager will check with the other maintainers and then tag the final release (e.g. v1.26.0) in the one or two weeks following the release candidate.

Feature freeze

  • Merge feature PRs before the freeze when you can.
  • Feature PRs still open at the freeze move to the next milestone. Watch Discord for the freeze announcement.
  • During the freeze, a release branch takes fixes backported from main. Release candidates ship for testing; the final release for that line is maintained from that branch.

Patch releases

During a cycle we may ship patch releases for an older line. For example, if the latest release is v1.2, we can still publish v1.1.1 after v1.1.0.

End of life (EOL)

We support per standard the last major release. For example, if the latest release is v1.26, we support v1.26 and v1.25, but not v1.24 anymore. We will only publish security fixes for the last major release, so if you are using an older release, please upgrade to a supported release as soon as possible. Also we always try to support the latest on main branch, so if you are using the latest on main, you should be fine.

Versions

Gitea has the main branch as a tip branch and has version branches such as release/v1.19. release/v1.19 is a release branch and we will tag v1.19.0 for binary download. If v1.19.0 has bugs, we will accept pull requests on the release/v1.19 branch and publish a v1.19.1 tag, after bringing the bug fix also to the main branch.

Since the main branch is a tip version, if you wish to use Gitea in production, please download the latest release tag version. All the branches will be protected via GitHub, all the PRs to every branch must be reviewed by two maintainers and must pass the automatic tests.

Releasing Gitea

  • Let MAJOR, MINOR and PATCH be Major, Minor and Patch version numbers, PATCH should be rc1, rc2, 0, 1, ...... MAJOR.MINOR will be kept the same as milestones on github or gitea in future.
  • Before releasing, confirm all the version's milestone issues or PRs has been resolved. Then discuss the release on Discord channel #maintainers and get agreed with almost all the owners and mergers. Or you can declare the version and if nobody is against it in about several hours.
  • If this is a big version first you have to create PR for changelog on branch main with PRs with label changelog and after it has been merged do following steps:
    • Create -dev tag as git tag -s -F release.notes vMAJOR.MINOR.0-dev and push the tag as git push origin vMAJOR.MINOR.0-dev.
    • When CI has finished building tag then you have to create a new branch named release/vMAJOR.MINOR
  • If it is bugfix version create PR for changelog on branch release/vMAJOR.MINOR and wait till it is reviewed and merged.
  • Add a tag as git tag -s -F release.notes vMAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, release.notes file could be a temporary file to only include the changelog this version which you added to CHANGELOG.md.
  • And then push the tag as git push origin vMAJOR.MINOR.$. CI will automatically create a release and upload all the compiled binary. (But currently it doesn't add the release notes automatically. Maybe we should fix that.)
  • If needed send a frontport PR for the changelog to branch main and update the version in docs/config.yaml to refer to the new version.
  • Send PR to blog repository announcing the release.
  • Verify all release assets were correctly published through CI on dl.gitea.com and GitHub releases. Once ACKed: