Rolling a Release

Below is the process used for creating and publishing a release of OpenLMIS 3.x. These steps are being documented for 3.0 Beta, and this page should be used and updated for 3.0, 3.1, and subsequent 3.x releases.

Goals

What's the purpose of publishing a release? It gives us a specific version of the software for the community to test drive and review. Beta releases will be deployed with demo data to the UAT site (uat.openlmis.org). That will be a public, visible URL that will stay the same while stakeholders test drive it. It will also have demo data and will not be automatically wiped and updated each time a new Git commit is made.

Prerequisites

Before you tag and publish the release, make sure the following are in place:

• Demo data and seed data: make sure you have demo data that is sufficient to demonstrate the features of this release. Your demo data might be built into the repositories and used in the build process OR be prepared to run a one-time database load script/command.
• Features are completed for this release and are checked in.
• All automated tests pass.
• Release notes and other documentation/publicity is ready for distribution.
• Release Manager (so named) has certifications for remote UAT environment and a docker client installed on the machine he'll be releasing from.
• Release Manager has docker hup credentials to push tagged images

Steps

When you are ready to create and publish a release:

1. Select a tag name such as '3.0.0-beta' based on the OpenLMIS Releases guidelines in the wiki.
2. Tag each GitHub repository with that same tag. Do this for each service/repo in the project, including the API services, the AngularJS UI repo, and the Blue distribution.
   1. Do we need a release branch? For the 3.0 Beta release, we do not need a release branch, only a tag. If there are any later fixes we need to apply to the 3.0 Beta, we would issue a new beta release (eg, 3.0 Beta R1) to publish additional, specific fixes.
      
   2. Do we need a code freeze? We do not need a "code freeze" process. We will add the tag in Git, and everyone can keep committing further work on master as usual. Updates to master will be automatically built and deployed at the Test site (test.openlmis.org), but not the UAT site (uat.openlmis.org).
   3. Confirm that your release tags appear in GitHub.
      1. Look under the Releases tab of each repository, eg https://github.com/OpenLMIS/openlmis-requisition/releases.
3. Ensure you have checked out (git) locally every repository tagged at the tag you created.  Confirm with "git describe"
4. Build each service and and publish to docker hub
   1. Build service image locally
      1. ./docker-compose f dockercompose.builder.yml run builder
   1. 1. ./docker-compose f dockercompose.builder.yml build image
      2. Confirm that the Images on your local machine are build
   2. Tag those Images with the tag you defined locally and publish to docker hub
      1. https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/push/
      2. Confirm the tag exists on Docker Hub for each image pushed
5. Checkout openlmis-deployment, update the UAT enviornment's docker-compose file with the right tag
6. Set your docker connection settings to UAT environment
7. Remove all running containers from UAT host
8. Kick of one (any) of the "deploy to uat" jobs on Jenkins
9. Load demo data manually into UAT host's postgres container
10. Navigate to uat.openlmis.org and ensure it works

Alternative steps (after step 2 above) if OLMIS-1105 and OLMIS-1106 are done:

1. Set CI/CD to build that specific tag
   
   1. TBD: The exact steps for this are still being determined. It may be necessary to use the Configure pages in Jenkins to set that specific tag to be in use.
   2. Confirm that the build has published images to Docker Hub tagged with your release tag.
      1. Look on the Tags page of each repository, eg https://hub.docker.com/r/openlmis/requisition/tags/
2. Trigger a Jenkins job to deploy to UAT.
   1. Log in at build.openlmis.org and click the Schedule a Build button on every job that ends in "deploy to uat"?
   2. ...wait for Jenkins CI/CD to run the build and deploy it to the UAT environment...
   3. Confirm that the build completes successfully.
      1. You can watch the status at build.openlmis.org. If there are any errors, stop and debug those issues.
3. Confirm that the UAT site is running your release.
   1. Look at the UAT site (uat.openlmis.org) and test out an area of functionality so you can confirm that the latest features for this release are present.
4. Load the Demo Data, if needed (you'll need remote docker machine access)
   
   1. For 3.0 Beta, we will manually run a command-line script to load the demo data into the UAT environment. In the future, we ultimately want Jenkins to load the demo data into the UAT environment.

Once all these steps are completed and verified, the release process is complete. At this point you can conduct communication tasks such as sharing the URL and Release Announcement to stakeholders. Congratulations!