Release Checklist for BIND 9.16.37, 9.16.37-S1, 9.18.11, 9.18.11-S1, 9.19.9

Release Schedule

Code Freeze: Wednesday, January 11th, 2023

Tagging Deadline: Monday, January 16th, 2023

Public Release: Wednesday, January 25th, 2023

Documentation Review Links

Closed issues assigned to the milestone without a release note:

• 9.19.9
• 9.18.11
• 9.16.37

Merge requests merged into the milestone without a release note:

• 9.19.9
• 9.18.11
• 9.16.37

Merge requests merged into the milestone without a CHANGES entry:

• 9.19.9
• 9.18.11
• 9.16.37

Release Checklist

Before the Code Freeze

• (QA) Inform Support and Marketing of impending release (and give estimated release dates).
• (QA) Ensure there are no permanent test failures on any platform.
• (QA) Check Perflab to ensure there has been no unexplained drop in performance for the versions being released.
• (QA) Check whether all issues assigned to the release milestone are resolved¹.
• (QA) Ensure that there are no outstanding merge requests in the private repository¹ (Subscription Edition only).
• (QA) Ensure all merge requests marked for backporting have been indeed backported.
• (QA) Update GitLab settings for all maintained branches to disallow merging to them.
• (QA) Announce (on Mattermost) that the code freeze is in effect.

Before the Tagging Deadline

• (QA) Ensure release notes are correct, ask Support and Marketing to check them as well.
• (QA) Add a release marker to CHANGES.
• (QA) Add a release marker to CHANGES.SE (Subscription Edition only).
• (QA) Update BIND 9 version in configure.ac (9.18+) or version (9.16).
• (QA) Rebuild configure using Autoconf on docs.isc.org (9.16).
• (QA) Tag the releases in the private repository (git tag -s -m "BIND 9.x.y" v9_x_y).

Before the ASN Deadline (for ASN Releases) or the Public Release Date (for Regular Releases)

• (QA) Check that the formatting is correct for HTML and PDF versions of release notes.
• (QA) Check that the formatting of the generated man pages is correct.
• (QA) Verify GitLab CI results for the tags created and sign off on the releases to be published.
• (QA) Update GitLab settings for all maintained branches to allow merging to them again.
• (QA) Prepare and merge MRs resetting the release notes and updating the version string for each maintained branch.
• (QA) Announce (on Mattermost) that the code freeze is over.
• (QA) Request signatures for the tarballs, providing their location and checksums.
• (Signers) Validate tarball checksums, sign tarballs, and upload signatures.
• (QA) Verify tarball signatures and check tarball checksums again.
• (Support) Pre-publish ASN and/or Subscription Edition tarballs so that packages can be built.
• (QA) Build and test ASN and/or Subscription Edition packages.
• (QA) Notify Support that the releases have been prepared.
• (Support) Send out ASNs (if applicable).

On the Day of Public Release

• (Support) Wait for clearance from Security Officer to proceed with the public release (if applicable).
• (Support) Place tarballs in public location on FTP site.
• (Support) Publish links to downloads on ISC website.
• (Support) Write release email to bind-announce.
• (Support) Write email to bind-users (if a major release).
• (Support) Send eligible customers updated links to the Subscription Edition (update the -S edition delivery tickets, even if those links were provided earlier via an ASN ticket).
• (Support) Update tickets in case of waiting support customers.
• (QA) Build and test any outstanding private packages.
• (QA) Build public RPMs.
• (SwEng) Build Debian/Ubuntu packages.
• (SwEng) Update Docker images.
• (QA) Inform Marketing of the release.
• (Marketing) Post short note to Twitter.
• (Marketing) Update Wikipedia entry for BIND.
• (Marketing) Write blog article (if a major release).
• (QA) Ensure all new tags are annotated and signed.
• (QA) Push tags for the published releases to the public repository.
• (QA) Merge published release tags (non-linearly) back into the their relevant development/maintenance branches.
• (QA) Sanitize confidential issues which are assigned to the current release milestone and do not describe a security vulnerability, then make them public.
• (QA) Sanitize confidential issues which are assigned to older release milestones and describe security vulnerabilities, then make them public if appropriate².
• (QA) Update QA tools used in GitLab CI (e.g. Black, PyLint, Sphinx) by modifying the relevant Dockerfile.

1. If not, use the time remaining until the tagging deadline to ensure all outstanding issues are either resolved or moved to a different milestone. ↩ ↩²

2. As a rule of thumb, security vulnerabilities which have reproducers merged to the public repository are considered okay for full disclosure. ↩