# The Gerbil Release Process

Congratulations, you are now a Gerbil maintainer, tasked with making a new release. Here is a checklist of all the steps you have to go through to make a successful release.

# Get All the Changes Merged

First, make sure your have all the features and bug fixes in that you need to be. Check the PR queue and the Open Issues for any release blocker.

# Regenerate the Bootstrap If Needed

If there were any changes to the core language, regenerate the bootstrap code. Include all the parts that have changed (runtime, prelude, expander, compiler). Make a dedicated PR just for this bootstrap upgrade.

# Make Sure Gerbil Works on all Supported Targets

Before you commit the above PR, build and test it at least on the following targets: Linux x86-64, macOS ARM64. Ask for help on gitter regarding platforms you can't support yourself.

# Merge Pre-Release PRs

• Update release scripts and release documentation
• Update homebrew (macOS) recipe (except exact commit) - ask @drewc for help
• Update Guix (Linux) recipe (except exact commit) - ask @drewc for help
• Update to Nix (Linux, macOS) recipe (except exact commit) - ask @fare for help (the recipe is currently in a fork of nixpkgs, not in the gerbil repository)

# Merge a PR for the Release itself

• Update the version everywhere in documentation
• Include a high-level summary of changes in the CHANGELOG.md
• Generate a MANIFEST for the release with the following shell command from the Gerbil repository top directory, where the argument is the desired release name: ./manifest.sh v0.19

Note that:

• The release PR should not contain anything but this version bump. Make any other necessary change in the pre-release PRs.
• The website will be automatically re-generated from the PR. No action needed.

# Create Official Announcements

Once the release PR is merged:

• Create a release announcement on GitHub discussions, with a release label, a one-paragraph blurb introduction, and the contents of the CHANGELOG.md entry above. See e.g. this previous announcement
• Create a release on GitHub. GitHub will automatically generate a template summarizing the PRs included / bugs fixed. Use that as the basis for the GitHub release note page. See e.g. this previous release.

Note that creating the release on GitHub should create a git tag, that you can pull in your local repository with: git pull --tags

# Update Tarballs

• Generate tarball for the Gerbil source code, including the Gambit submodule at the correct version in src/gambit. Mind that the tarball autogenerated by GitHub does not include Gambit.
• We automatically generate a binary tarball, Fedora rpm, and Ubuntu deb file for Linux x86_64.
• Assets are auto-published to the artifacts page on Github release page

# Merge Post-Release PRs

• Remove the MANIFEST file.
• Update to homebrew (macOS) recipe - ask @drewc for help
• Update to Guix (Linux) recipe - ask @drewc for help
• Update to Nixpkgs (Linux, macOS) recipe - ask @fare for help

# Announce the Release to the World

Point to the announcement page on GitHub.

• Announce on gitter.
• Announce on reddit: r/scheme. See e.g. this previous announcement.
• Announce on Hacker News. See e.g. this previous announcement.
• Announce on Lobsters. See e.g. this previous announcement.
• Announce on twitter. See e.g. this previous announcement.