Releasing a new version

We periodically release new VM versions, with a mostly automated process. The objective of this page is to describe the release process.

Actions to Release

Making a new release involves the following:

1. Deciding a new version number: a minor/patch version. Starting a new major version is a not a release task, as it requires to set up the new version branch.
2. Making a changes log with the changes in the release. This can be done automatically using github on the releases page.
3. Make a PR with the following:
   • Updating the CHANGELOG.md file
4. Tag: Once the PR in the previous is accepted, tag that commit. That will launch the CI process and eventually upload a new version!

Note: Previous releases required putting the version info in the CMakeLists.txt file. This prevented us from using full fledged semantic versions with suffixes. Since 10.3.3 we are extracting the version automatically from the last tag in the branch at build time. Non-release commits (intermediate night builds) will not be tagged and include the distance to the previous tag in number of commits.