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Release Checklist for BIND 9.16.46, 9.16.46-S1, 9.18.22, 9.18.22-S1, 9.19.20

Release Schedule

Code Freeze: Wednesday, 3 January 2024

Tagging Deadline: Monday, 8 January 2024

Public Release: Wednesday, 17 January 2024

Documentation Review Links

Closed issues assigned to the milestone without a release note:

Merge requests merged into the milestone without a release note:

Merge requests merged into the milestone without a CHANGES entry:

Release Checklist

Before the Code Freeze

  • (QA) Rebase -S editions on top of current open-source versions: git checkout bind-9.18-sub && git rebase origin/bind-9.18
  • (QA) Inform Support and Marketing of impending release (and give estimated release dates).
  • (QA) Ensure there are no permanent test failures on any platform. Check public and private scheduled pipelines.
  • (QA) Check charts from shotgun:* jobs in the scheduled pipelines to verify there is no unexplained performance drop for any protocol.
  • (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) Announce (on Mattermost) that the code freeze is in effect.

Before the Tagging Deadline

  • (QA) Inspect the current output of the cross-version-config-tests job to verify that no unexpected backward-incompatible change was introduced in the current release cycle.
  • (QA) Ensure release notes are correct, ask Support and Marketing to check them as well. Example
  • (QA) Add a release marker to CHANGES. Examples: 9.18, 9.16
  • (QA) Add a release marker to CHANGES.SE (Subscription Edition only). Example
  • (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) Update GitLab settings for all maintained branches to disallow merging to them: public, private
  • (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 the HTML version 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: public, private
  • (QA) Prepare (using version_bump.py) and merge MRs resetting the release notes and updating the version string for each maintained branch.
  • (QA) Rebase the Subscription Edition branches (including recent release prep commits) on top of the open source branches with updated version strings.
  • (QA) Announce (on Mattermost) that the code freeze is over.
  • (QA) Request signatures for the tarballs, providing their location and checksums. Ask signers on Mattermost.
  • (Signers) Ensure that the contents of tarballs and tags are identical.
  • (Signers) Validate tarball checksums, sign tarballs, and upload signatures.
  • (QA) Verify tarball signatures and check tarball checksums again: Run publish_bind.sh on repo.isc.org to pre-publish.
  • (QA) Prepare the patches/ subdirectory for each security release (if applicable).
  • (QA) Pre-publish ASN and/or Subscription Edition tarballs so that packages can be built.
  • (QA) Build and test ASN and/or Subscription Edition packages (in cloudsmith branch in private repo). Example
  • (QA) Use the Printing Press project to prepare a release announcement email.
  • (Marketing) Update ASN documents in the SF portal.
  • (Marketing) Send out ASN emails (if applicable).

On the Day of Public Release

  • (QA) Wait for clearance from Security Officer to proceed with the public release (if applicable).
  • (QA) Place tarballs in public location on FTP site.
  • (QA) Inform Marketing of the release, providing FTP links for the published tarballs.
  • (Marketing) Publish links to downloads on ISC website. Example
  • (Marketing) Update the BIND -S information document in SF with download links to the new versions. (If this is a security release, this will have already been done as part of the ASN process.)
  • (Marketing) Update the Current Software Versions document in the SF portal if any stable versions were released.
  • (Marketing) Send the release announcement email to the bind-announce mailing list (and to bind-users if a major release - example).
  • (Marketing) Announce release on social media sites.
  • (Marketing) Update Wikipedia entry for BIND.
  • (Support) Add the new releases to the vulnerability matrix in the Knowledge Base.
  • (Support) Update tickets in case of waiting support customers.
  • (QA) Build and test any outstanding private packages in private repo. Example
  • (QA) Build public RPMs. Example commit which triggers Copr builds automatically
  • (SwEng) Build Debian/Ubuntu packages.
  • (SwEng) Update Docker files here and make sure push is synchronized to GitHub. Docker Hub should pick it up automatically. Example
  • (QA) Ensure all new tags are annotated and signed. git show --show-signature v9.19.12
  • (QA) Push tags for the published releases to the public repository.
  • (QA) Using merge_tag.py, merge published release tags back into the their relevant development/maintenance branches.
  • (QA) Ensure allow_failure: true is removed from the cross-version-config-tests job if it was set during the current release cycle.
  • (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 <code>Dockerfile</code>.
  • (QA) Run a pipeline to rebuild all images used in GitLab CI.
  • (QA) Update metadata.json with the upcoming release information.

  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. ↩

Edited by Michał Kępień
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