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OpenTelemetry Collector Release Procedure

Collector build and testing is currently fully automated. However there are still certain operations that need to be performed manually in order to make a release.

We release both core and contrib collectors with the same versions where the contrib release uses the core release as a dependency. We’ve divided this process into four sections. A release engineer must release:

  1. The Core collector, including the collector builder CLI tool.
  2. The Contrib collector.
  3. The artifacts

Important Note: You’ll need to be able to sign git commits/tags in order to be able to release a collector version. Follow this guide to setup it up.

Important Note: You’ll need to be an approver for both the repos in order to be able to make the release. This is required as you’ll need to push tags and commits directly to the following repositories:

Release manager

A release manager is the person responsible for a specific release. While the manager might request help from other folks, they are ultimately responsible for the success of a release.

In order to have more people comfortable with the release process, and in order to decrease the burden on a small number of volunteers, all core approvers are release managers from time to time, listed under the Release Schedule section. That table is updated at every release, with the current manager adding themselves to the bottom of the table, removing themselves from the top of the table.

It is possible that a core approver isn't a contrib approver. In that case, the release manager should coordinate with a contrib approver for the steps requiring such role, like the publishing of tags.

Releasing opentelemetry-collector

  1. Determine the version number that will be assigned to the release. During the beta phase, we increment the minor version number and set the patch number to 0. In this document, we are using v0.55.0 as the version to be released, following v0.54.0.

  2. Run the action Automation - Prepare Release. This will create an issue to track the progress of the release and a pull request to update the changelog and version numbers in the repo.

  3. Update Contrib to use the latest in development version of Core. Run make update-otel in Contrib root directory and if it results in any changes, submit a PR. Open this PR as draft. This is to ensure that the latest core does not break contrib in any way. We’ll update it once more to the final release number later.

  4. Create a branch named release/<release-series> (e.g. release/v0.45.x) from the changelog update commit and push to open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector.

  5. Tag all the module groups (stable, beta) with the new release version by running the make push-tags command (e.g. make push-tags MODSET=stable and make push-tags MODSET=beta). Wait for the new tag build to pass successfully.

  6. The release script for the collector builder should create a new GitHub release for the builder. This is a separate release from the core, but we might join them in the future if it makes sense.

  7. A new v0.55.0 release should be automatically created on Github by now. Edit it and use the contents from the CHANGELOG.md as the release's description.

Releasing opentelemetry-collector-contrib

  1. Run the action Automation - Prepare Release. This will a pull request to update the changelog and version numbers in the repo.

  2. Create a branch named release/<release-series> (e.g. release/v0.45.x) in Contrib from the changelog update commit and push it to open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib.

  3. Tag all the module groups (contrib-base) with the new release version by running the make push-tags MODSET=contrib-base command. Wait for the new tag build to pass successfully.

  4. A new v0.55.0 release should be automatically created on Github by now. Edit it and use the contents from the CHANGELOG.md as the release's description.

Producing the artifacts

The last step of the release process creates artifacts for the new version of the collector and publishes images to Dockerhub. The steps in this portion of the release are done in the opentelemetry-collector-releases repo.

  1. Update the ./distribution/**/manifest.yaml files to include the new release version.

  2. Update the builder version in OTELCOL_BUILDER_VERSION to the new release in the Makefile. While this might not be strictly necessary for every release, this is a good practice.

  3. Create a pull request with the change and ensure the build completes successfully. See example.

  4. Tag with the new release version by running the make push-tags TAG=v0.55.0 command. Wait for the new tag build to pass successfully.

  5. Ensure the "Release" action passes, this will

    1. push new container images to https://hub.docker.com/repository/docker/otel/opentelemetry-collector

    2. create a Github release for the tag and push all the build artifacts to the Github release. See example.

Troubleshooting

  1. unknown revision internal/coreinternal/v0.55.0 -- This is typically an indication that there's a dependency on a new module. You can fix it by adding a new replaces entry to the go.mod for the affected module.
  2. commitChangesToNewBranch failed: invalid merge -- This is a known issue with our release tooling. The current workaround is to clone a fresh copy of the repository and try again. Note that you may need to set up a fork remote pointing to your own fork for the release tooling to work properly.
  3. could not run Go Mod Tidy: go mod tidy failed when running multimod -- This is a known issue with our release tooling. The current workaround is to run make gotidy manually after the multimod tool fails and commit the result.

Bugfix releases

Bugfix release criteria

Both opentelemetry-collector and opentelemetry-collector-contrib have very short 2 week release cycles. Because of this, we put a high bar when considering making a patch release, to avoid wasting engineering time unnecessarily.

When considering making a bugfix release on the v0.N.x release cycle, the bug in question needs to fulfill the following criteria:

  1. The bug has no workaround or the workaround is significantly harder to put in place than updating the version. Examples of simple workarounds are:
    • Reverting a feature gate.
    • Changing the configuration to an easy to find value.
  2. The bug happens in common setups. To gauge this, maintainers can consider the following:
    • The bug is not specific to an uncommon platform
    • The bug happens with the default configuration or with a commonly used one (e.g. has been reported by multiple people)
  3. The bug is sufficiently severe. For example (non-exhaustive list):
    • The bug makes the Collector crash reliably
    • The bug makes the Collector fail to start under an accepted configuration
    • The bug produces significant data loss
    • The bug makes the Collector negatively affect its environment (e.g. significantly affects its host machine)

The OpenTelemetry Collector maintainers will ultimately have the responsibility to assess if a given bug fulfills all the necessary criteria and may grant exceptions in a case-by-case basis.

Bugfix release procedure

The following documents the procedure to release a bugfix

  1. Create a pull request against the release/<release-series> (e.g. release/v0.45.x) branch to apply the fix.
  2. Create a pull request to update version number against the release/<release-series> branch.
  3. Once those changes have been merged, create a pull request to the main branch from the release/<release-series> branch.
  4. Enable the Merge pull request setting in the repository's Settings tab.
  5. Tag all the modules with the new release version by running the make add-tag command (e.g. make add-tag TAG=v0.55.0). Push them to open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector with make push-tag TAG=v0.55.0. Wait for the new tag build to pass successfully.
  6. IMPORTANT: The pull request to bring the changes from the release branch MUST be merged using the Merge pull request method, and NOT squashed using “Squash and merge”. This is important as it allows us to ensure the commit SHA from the release branch is also on the main branch. Not following this step will cause much go dependency sadness.
  7. Once the branch has been merged, it will be auto-deleted. Restore the release branch via GitHub.
  8. Once the patch is release, disable the Merge pull request setting.

Release schedule

Date Version Release manager
2023-03-06 v0.73.0 @Aneurysm9
2023-03-20 v0.74.0 @jpkrohling
2023-04-03 v0.75.0 @mx-psi
2023-04-17 v0.76.0 @djaglowski
2023-05-01 v0.77.0 @dmitryax
2023-05-15 v0.78.0 @bogdandrutu
2023-05-29 v0.79.0 @codeboten