Dev: Releasing IPython

This document contains notes about the process that is used to release IPython. Our release process is currently not very formal and could be improved.

Most of the release process is automated by the release script in the tools directory of our main repository. This document is just a handy reminder for the release manager.

1. Generate release notes.

For writing release notes, the following will cleanly show who contributed as author of commits (get the previous release name from the tag list with git tag):

git log --format="* %aN" $PREV_RELEASE... | sort -u

You can use:

git log --format="%aN <%aE>" $PREV_RELEASE... | sort -u -f

To find duplicates and update .mailmap.

2. Run the build_release script

This does all the file checking and building that the real release script will do. This will let you do test installations, check that the build procedure runs OK, etc. You may want to disable a few things like multi-version RPM building while testing, because otherwise the build takes really long.

3. Run the release script

This makes the tar.gz, eggs and Win32 .exe installer. It posts them to the site and registers the release with PyPI.

4. Update the IPython website

This should include announcements and links to the updated release notes in html form. Remember to put a short note on the news page of the site.

5. Drafting a short release announcement

This should include i) highlights and ii) a link to the html version of the Whats new section of the documentation.

6. Make sure that the released version of the docs is live on the site.

For this we are now using the gh-pages system:

• Make a static directory for the final copy of the release docs.
• Update the index.rst file and run build_index.py to update the html version.
• Update the stable symlink to point to the released version.
• Run git add for all the new files and commit.
• Run git push to update the public version of the docs on gh-pages.

7. Celebrate!