Solana Release process

Branches and Tags

========================= master branch (edge channel) =======================>
         \                      \                     \
          \___v0.7.0 tag         \                     \
           \                      \         v0.9.0 tag__\
            \          v0.8.0 tag__\                     \
 v0.7.1 tag__\                      \                 v0.9 branch (beta channel)
              \___v0.7.2 tag         \___v0.8.1 tag
               \                      \
                \                      \
           v0.7 branch         v0.8 branch (stable channel)

master branch

All new development occurs on the master branch.

Bug fixes that affect a vX.Y branch are first made on master. This is to allow a fix some soak time on master before it is applied to one or more stabilization branches.

Merging to master first also helps ensure that fixes applied to one release are present for future releases. (Sometimes the joy of landing a critical release blocker in a branch causes you to forget to propagate back to master!)"

Once the bug fix lands on master it is cherry-picked into the vX.Y branch and potentially the vX.Y-1 branch. The exception to this rule is when a bug fix for vX.Y doesn't apply to master or vX.Y-1.

Immediately after a new stabilization branch is forged, the Cargo.toml minor version (Y) in the master branch is incremented by the release engineer. Incrementing the major version of the master branch is outside the scope of this document.

vX.Y stabilization branches

These are stabilization branches for a given milestone. They are created off the master branch as late as possible prior to the milestone release.

vX.Y.Z release tag

The release tags are created as desired by the owner of the given stabilization branch, and cause that X.Y.Z release to be shipped to https://crates.io

Immediately after a new vX.Y.Z branch tag has been created, the Cargo.toml patch version number (Z) of the stabilization branch is incremented by the release engineer.

Channels

Channels are used by end-users (humans and bots) to consume the branches described in the previous section, so they may automatically update to the most recent version matching their desired stability.

There are three release channels that map to branches as follows:

edge - tracks the master branch, least stable.
beta - tracks the largest (and latest) vX.Y stabilization branch, more stable.
stable - tracks the second largest vX.Y stabilization branch, most stable.

Steps to Create a Branch

Create the new branch

Check out the latest commit on master branch:
```
git fetch --all
git checkout upstream/master
```
Determine the new branch name. The name should be "v" + the first 2 version fields from Cargo.toml. For example, a Cargo.toml with version = "0.9.0" implies the next branch name is "v0.9".
Create the new branch and push this branch to the solana repository:
```
git checkout -b <branchname>
git push -u origin <branchname>
```

Alternatively use the Github UI.

Update master branch to the next release minor version

After the new branch has been created and pushed, update the Cargo.toml files on master to the next semantic version (e.g. 0.9.0 -> 0.10.0) with:
```
$ scripts/increment-cargo-version.sh minor
```

Push all the changed Cargo.toml and Cargo.lock files to the master branch with something like:

git co -b version_update
git ls-files -m | xargs git add
git commit -m 'Bump version to X.Y+1.0'
git push -u origin version_update

Confirm that your freshly cut release branch is shown as BETA_CHANNEL and the previous release branch as STABLE_CHANNEL:
```
ci/channel-info.sh
```

Miscellaneous Clean up

Pin the spl-token-cli version in the newly promoted stable branch by setting splTokenCliVersion in scripts/spl-token-cli-version.sh to the latest release that depends on the stable branch (usually this will be the latest spl-token-cli release).
Update mergify.yml to add backport actions for the new branch and remove actions for the obsolete branch.
Adjust the Github backport labels to add the new branch label and remove the label for the obsolete branch.
Announce on Discord #development that the release branch exists so people know to use the new backport labels.

Steps to Create a Release

Create the Release Tag on GitHub

Go to GitHub Releases for tagging a release.
Click "Draft new release". The release tag must exactly match the version field in /Cargo.toml prefixed by v.
1. If the Cargo.toml version field is 0.12.3, then the release tag must be v0.12.3
Make sure the Target Branch field matches the branch you want to make a release on.
1. If you want to release v0.12.0, the target branch must be v0.12
Fill the release notes.
1. If this is the first release on the branch (e.g. v0.13.0), paste in this template. Engineering Lead can provide summary contents for release notes if needed.
2. If this is a patch release, review all the commits since the previous release on this branch and add details as needed.
Click "Save Draft", then confirm the release notes look good and the tag name and branch are correct.
Ensure all desired commits (usually backports) are landed on the branch by now.
Ensure the release is marked "This is a pre-release". This flag will need to be removed manually after confirming the Linux binary artifacts appear at a later step.
Go back into edit the release and click "Publish release" while being marked as a pre-release.
Confirm there is new git tag with intended version number at the intended revision after running git fetch locally.

Update release branch with the next patch version

This action ensures that publishing a release will trigger the creation of a PR to update the Cargo.toml files on release branch to the next semantic version (e.g. 0.9.0 -> 0.9.1). Ensure that the created PR makes it through CI and gets submitted.

Prepare for the next release

Go to GitHub Releases and create a new draft release for X.Y.Z+1 with empty release notes. This allows people to incrementally add new release notes until it's time for the next release
1. Also, point the branch field to the same branch and mark the release as "This is a pre-release".
Go to the Github Milestones. Create a new milestone for the X.Y.Z+1, move over unresolved issues still in the X.Y.Z milestone, then close the X.Y.Z milestone.

Verify release automation success

Go to Solana Releases and click on the latest release that you just published. Verify that all of the build artifacts are present, then uncheck "This is a pre-release" for the release.

Build artifacts can take up to 60 minutes after creating the tag before appearing. To check for progress:

The solana-secondary Buildkite pipeline handles creating the Linux and macOS release artifacts and updated crates. Look for a job under the tag name of the release: https://buildkite.com/solana-labs/solana-secondary.
The Windows release artifacts are produced by GitHub Actions. Look for a job under the tag name of the release: https://github.com/solana-labs/solana/actions.

Crates.io should have an updated Solana version. This can take 2-3 hours, and sometimes fails in the solana-secondary job. If this happens and the error is non-fatal, click "Retry" on the "publish crate" job

Update software on testnet.solana.com

See the documentation at https://github.com/solana-labs/cluster-ops/. devnet.solana.com and mainnet-beta.solana.com run stable releases that have been tested on testnet. Do not update devnet or mainnet-beta with a beta release.