Frugalware Release HOWTO

1. Introduction

The aim of this howto is to show what's the procedure of a stable Frugalware release. The to-be-created release in this howto is 0.5, the previous release is 0.4.

2. A testing release

Just because I don't know where to document this, here is the command line what I use to sync changes from -current to -testing before a release:

$ rsync -avP --delete-after frugalware-current/ frugalware-testing/

3. Preparing

send a mail to -devel about "please stop version and release bumps"
check if the artwork has been updated completely. see this mail from Nadfoka on what items should be checked
ask someone to update the screenshots
sync the archs, checkpkgs shouldn't have any red pkg in it's output
run gensync to rebuild the fdbs
generate isos and test if everything is ok (ie. install from cd1-cd2 on i686, and start kde, or something)
tag the release using git tag

4. Creating the stable tree

Copy the full tree on genesis:

$ cd /home/ftp/pub/frugalware
$ cp -av frugalware-current frugalware-0.5

5. Updating the -current tree

Now one have two tree. All what one should do in -current is to bump —from-tag version to 0.5 in tools/genpkgs.

6. Updating the -stable tree

rename the frugalware-current fdbs to frugalware
rebuild the initrd with

STABLE = true

  in the Makefile
- s/-current// in tools/mkpkglst
- update VERSION in docs/Makefile
- update `\.git/description`
- update kernel FrugalBuild to hardwire the kernel release (`\_F_kernel_rel`)
- update `/source/include/kernel-module.sh` (s/=/>=/) and rebuild the fdbs
  again
- run the just modified genpkgs to regenerate the ChangeLog.txt to start from
  the 0.4 tag to the 0.5 tag
- update pacman{,-tools} so that -stable will be the default on -Syu / repoman
  upd, not -current
- upload the fdbs to the mysql db using fpm2db, just run all2db.sh from the
  /tools dir
- create a new chroot tarball for each arch

7. Testing

generate isos, test all of them (net,cd,dvd for each arch)
create an usb stick installer tarball for each arch
create an tftp boot image for each arch
check if the upgrade from 0.4->0.5 works or not, probably a simple -Syu is not enough, then write a howto and rebuild the manual

8. Announcement

put the isos online and wait at least 24h so that the mirrors will be in sync at release time
create torrents for the isos and make sure at least one machine seeds them
add the new version to the bts
write an announcement, put it out to somewhere and ask Alex or LGee to spellcheck it
push it to the homepage-ng repo
mark the release as "done" in /frugalware/xml/roadmap.xml (homepage-ng repo) and add the proper newsid value
update the topic of #frugalware
update the freshmeat entry

9. For the next release

find a codename
update roadmap.xml

Done!