Release Process

Pushing a new release

The steps vary slightly depending on the type of release you are pushing (major, minor or patch)

To release a new patch version (eg. from 0.28.1 to 0.28.2)

Cherry-pick all required changes to the -stable branch (eg. 0.28-stable for 0.28).
Ensure you are on the -stable branch locally.
Run npm version patch to bump the version number, and create the Git commit and tag
Run git push origin 0.xx-stable --follow-tags (replace 0.xx-stable with the right branch name)

To release a new minor or major version (eg. from 0.28.x to 0.29.0)

Make sure current master branch is green on Circle, Travis and AppVeyor
Ensure you are on master and your local copy of Yarn is up-to-date
Run ./scripts/release-branch.sh. This will:
- Create the 0.xx-stable branch and 0.xx.0 tag
- Bump master to the next minor version (eg. after releasing 0.29.0, master will be bumped to 0.30.0)
- Push it all to origin

To mark an RC release as stable

Once an RC has been tested by the community for a while and all major bugs have been ironed out, it can be marked as stable. To do this, go to https://release.yarnpkg.com/ and click the “Promote RC to stable” button.

Note: There is a whitelist for the users that are able to access this page. If a maintainer is missing from the whitelist, you can modify it here.

Debugging a release

Sometimes things go wrong. Here’s how to debug some common issues:

I’ve committed the tag but the site still points to the old version

Check the GitHub release for any missing artifacts. The release scripts do not bump the version number on the site until both the Linux and the Windows artifacts have been attached to the release.

Linux artifacts (`.tar.gz`, `.deb`, etc.) are missing

Check the CircleCI build and re-run it if it has failed. If the build succeeded, check the webhook logs for any errors.

Windows artifacts (`.msi`) are missing

Check the AppVeyor build and re-run it if it has failed. If the build succeeded, check the webhook logs for any errors.

All artifacts are attached to release, but site still points to old version

Check the yarn-version Jenkins build job and see whether it has failed.

How to do it manually

Most of the release has been automated and is fairly straightforward. Normally, you can just stop reading here. However, if the release tooling ever breaks (or if you like doing things the hard way), you can manually perform the release steps.

Creating a new release

Run yarn build-dist && yarn build-deb to build the release tarball, Debian package, and RPM package
Run yarn build-dist && yarn build-win-installer on Windows to build the Windows installer
GPG sign the .tar.gz and .js artifacts:
```
gpg -u 9D41F3C3 --armor --detach-sign yarn-0.xx.xx.tar.gz
```
This will generate .asc files that you should also attach to the release

Authenticode sign the .msi artifacts:

osslsigncode sign -t http://timestamp.digicert.com -n "Yarn Installer" -i https://yarnpkg.com/ -pkcs12 yarn-20161122.pfx -readpass yarn-20161122.key -h sha1 -in yarn-0.xx.xx-unsigned.msi -out yarn-0.xx.xx.msi
osslsigncode sign -t http://timestamp.digicert.com -n "Yarn Installer" -i https://yarnpkg.com/ -pkcs12 yarn-20161122.pfx -readpass yarn-20161122.key -nest -h sha2 -in yarn-0.xx.xx.msi -out yarn-0.xx.xx.msi

Create new release on GitHub, and attach all artifacts. For the MSI, ensure you attach the signed version!
Publish the tarball to npm: npm publish ./artifacts/yarn-v0.xx.xx.tar.gz
Perform post-release steps below

Bumping RC to stable

Modify GitHub release to mark it as stable
Run npm dist-tag add yarn@0.xx.xx latest (where 0.xx.xx is the version number being released)
Run post-release steps below

Post-release

Bump version number in _config.yml on the website
Run ./scripts/build-chocolatey.ps1 to push to Chocolatey
Run ./scripts/update-homebrew.sh to push to Homebrew
Debian and CentOS repo should be automatically updated with the latest release within 5 minutes (keep an eye on the commits)

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