These instructions cover steps needed to create new releases of SeleniumLibrary. Many individual steps are automated, but we don't want to automate the whole procedure because it would be hard to react if something goes terribly wrong. When applicable, the steps are listed as commands that can be copied and executed on the command line.
Contents
Generating releases has only been tested on Linux, but it ought to work the same way also on OSX and other unixes. Generating releases on Windows may work but is not tested, supported, or recommended.
Creating releases is only supported with Python 3.6 or newer. If you are using Ubuntu or one of its derivatives and don't have Python 3.6 in the official package repository, you may consider using the Dead Snakes PPA.
The pip
and invoke
commands below are also expected to run on Python
3.6+. Alternatively, it's possible to use the python3.6 -m pip
approach
to run these commands.
Many steps are automated using the generic Invoke tool with a help by our rellu utilities, but also other tools and modules are needed. A pre-condition is installing all these, and that's easiest done using pip and the provided requirements-build.txt file:
pip install -r requirements-build.txt
Invoke tasks are defined in the tasks.py file and they are executed from the command line like:
inv[oke] task [options]
Run invoke
without arguments for help. All tasks can be listed using
invoke --list
and each task's usage with invoke --help task
.
Git commands used below always expect that origin
is the project main
repository. If that's not the case, and instead origin
is your personal
fork, you probably still want to push to the main repository. In that case
you need to add upstream
or similar to git push
commands before
running them.
Make sure that adequate tests are executed before releases are created. See test/README.rst for details.
Check that you are on the master branch and have nothing left to commit, pull, or push:
git branch git status git pull --rebase git push
Clean up:
invoke clean
Set version information to a shell variable to ease copy-pasting further commands. Add
aN
,bN
orrcN
postfix if creating a pre-release:VERSION=<version>
For example,
VERSION=3.0.1
orVERSION=3.1a2
.
Set GitHub user information into shell variables to ease copy-pasting the following command:
GITHUB_USERNAME=<username> GITHUB_PASSWORD=<password>
Alternatively, supply the credentials when running that command.
Generate a template for the release notes:
invoke release-notes -w -v $VERSION -u $GITHUB_USERNAME -p $GITHUB_PASSWORD
The
-v $VERSION
option can be omitted if version is already set. Omit the-w
option if you just want to get release notes printed to the console, not written to a file.When generating release notes for a preview release like
3.0.2rc1
, the list of issues is only going to contain issues with that label (e.g.rc1
) or with a label of an earlier preview release (e.g.alpha1
,beta2
).
Fill the missing details in the generated release notes template.
Make sure that issues have correct information:
- All issues should have type (bug, enhancement or task) and priority set. Notice that issues with the task type are automatically excluded from the release notes.
- Issue priorities should be consistent.
- Issue titles should be informative. Consistency is good here too, but no need to overdo it.
If information needs to be added or edited, its better to edit it in the issue tracker than in the generated release notes. This allows re-generating the list of issues later if more issues are added.
Add, commit and push:
git add docs/SeleniumLibrary-$VERSION.rst git commit -m "Release notes for $VERSION" docs/SeleniumLibrary-$VERSION.rst git push
Update later if necessary. Writing release notes is typically the biggest task when generating releases, and getting everything done in one go is often impossible.
Set version information in src/SeleniumLibrary/__init__.py:
invoke set-version $VERSION
Commit and push changes:
git commit -m "Updated version to $VERSION" src/SeleniumLibrary/__init__.py git push
Generate keyword documentation:
invoke kw-docs git commit -m "Generated docs for version $VERSION" docs/SeleniumLibrary.html git push
Note that this must be done after`setting version <Set version>`_ above or docs will have wrong version number.
If README.rst has changed, generate project documentation based on it:
invoke project-docs git commit -m "Regenerated project docs" docs/index.html git push
Create an annotated tag and push it:
git tag -a v$VERSION -m "Release $VERSION" git push --tags
Add short release notes to GitHub's releases page with a link to the full release notes.
Checkout the earlier created tag if necessary:
git checkout v$VERSION
This isn't necessary if continuing right after tagging.
Cleanup (again). This removes temporary files as well as
build
anddist
directories:invoke clean
Create source distribution and universal (i.e. Python 2 and 3 compatible) wheel:
python setup.py sdist bdist_wheel --universal ls -l dist
Distributions can be tested locally if needed.
Upload distributions to PyPI:
twine upload dist/*
Verify that project the page at PyPI looks good.
Test installation (add
--pre
with pre-releases):pip install --upgrade robotframework-seleniumlibrary
Back to master if needed:
git checkout master
Set dev version based on the previous version:
invoke set-version dev git commit -m "Back to dev version" src/SeleniumLibrary/__init__.py git push
For example,
1.2.3
is changed to1.2.4.dev1
and2.0.1a1
to2.0.1a2.dev1
.Close the issue tracker milestone. Create also new milestone for the next release unless one exists already.
robotframework-users and robotframework-announce lists. The latter is not needed with preview releases but should be used at least with major updates. Notice that sending to it requires admin rights.
Twitter. Either Tweet something yourself and make sure it's re-tweeted by @robotframework, or send the message directly as @robotframework. This makes the note appear also at http://robotframework.org.
Should include a link to more information. Possibly a link to the full release notes or an email to the aforementioned mailing lists.
#seleniumlibrary
channel on the Slack community. Possibly also#general
with major releases.Robot Framework LinkedIn group. At least with major updates.
Consider sending announcements, at least with major releases, also to other forums where we want to make the library more well known. This includes Selenium forums as well as general testing and test automation forums.
Need to possibly format the message slightly differently as not all recipients are familiar with Robot Framework nor this library.