c12s-kubespray/RELEASE.md

Release Process

The Kubespray Project is released on an as-needed basis. The process is as follows:

1. An issue is proposing a new release with a changelog since the last release. Please see a good sample issue
2. At least one of the approvers must approve this release
3. The kube_version_min_required variable is set to n-1
4. Remove hashes for EOL versions of kubernetes from *_checksums variables.
5. Create the release note with Kubernetes Release Notes Generator. See the following Release note creation section for the details.
6. An approver creates new release in GitHub using a version and tag name like vX.Y.Z and attaching the release notes
7. An approver creates a release branch in the form release-X.Y
8. The corresponding version of quay.io/kubespray/kubespray:vX.Y.Z and quay.io/kubespray/vagrant:vX.Y.Z docker images are built and tagged
9. The KUBESPRAY_VERSION variable is updated in .gitlab-ci.yml
10. The release issue is closed
11. An announcement email is sent to kubernetes-dev@googlegroups.com with the subject [ANNOUNCE] Kubespray $VERSION is released
12. The topic of the #kubespray channel is updated with vX.Y.Z is released! | ...

Major/minor releases and milestones

• For major releases (vX.Y) Kubespray maintains one branch (release-X.Y). Minor releases (vX.Y.Z) are available only as tags.

• Security patches and bugs might be backported.

• Fixes for major releases (vX.Y) and minor releases (vX.Y.Z) are delivered via maintenance releases (vX.Y.Z) and assigned to the corresponding open GitHub milestone. That milestone remains open for the major/minor releases support lifetime, which ends once the milestone is closed. Then only a next major or minor release can be done.

• Kubespray major and minor releases are bound to the given kube_version major/minor version numbers and other components' arbitrary versions, like etcd or network plugins. Older or newer component versions are not supported and not tested for the given release (even if included in the checksum variables, like kubeadm_checksums).

• There is no unstable releases and no APIs, thus Kubespray doesn't follow semver. Every version describes only a stable release. Breaking changes, if any introduced by changed defaults or non-contrib ansible roles' playbooks, shall be described in the release notes. Other breaking changes, if any in the contributed addons or bound versions of Kubernetes and other components, are considered out of Kubespray scope and are up to the components' teams to deal with and document.

• Minor releases can change components' versions, but not the major kube_version. Greater kube_version requires a new major or minor release. For example, if Kubespray v2.0.0 is bound to kube_version: 1.4.x, calico_version: 0.22.0, etcd_version: v3.0.6, then Kubespray v2.1.0 may be bound to only minor changes to kube_version, like v1.5.1 and any changes to other components, like etcd v4, or calico 1.2.3. And Kubespray v3.x.x shall be bound to kube_version: 2.x.x respectively.

Release note creation

You can create a release note with:

export GITHUB_TOKEN=<your-github-token>
export ORG=kubernetes-sigs
export REPO=kubespray
release-notes --start-sha <The start commit-id> --end-sha <The end commit-id> --dependencies=false --output=/tmp/kubespray-release-note --required-author=""

If the release note file(/tmp/kubespray-release-note) contains "### Uncategorized" pull requests, those pull requests don't have a valid kind label(kind/feature, etc.). It is necessary to put a valid label on each pull request and run the above release-notes command again to get a better release note)