Apache Tomcat Release Process
Introduction
This is written primarily for Apache Tomcat release managers although it may also be of interest to anyone looking to validate and/or replicate the release process. This page uses Tomcat 7 as an example but the same process applies to later versions as well. Note that earlier versions have a slightly different, more complex release process.
Pre-requisites
- A subversion client installed and on your path
- Apache Ant installed and on your path (see BUILDING.txt in the root of the svn repo for version requirements)
- The latest release of the minimum Java version that the Tomcat version runs on installed and on your path
- The ability to run Windows binaries (to build the Windows installer)
- A reasonable internet connection (you will need to upload ~100MB)
Create the tag
The aim is to create a copy of the current trunk but without the "-dev" appended to the end of the version number.
- Perform an svn checkout of tc7.0.x/trunk (e.g. to 7.0.x-release)
- Edit 7.0.x-release/build.properties to remove the "-dev" from the version number
version.suffix=
- svn cp . https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/tomcat/tc7.0.x/tags/TOMCAT_7_0_XX
- Check the diff mailed to the dev list
I found it simplest to keep this checkout with the modified build.properties.default and just do an svn up prior to each tag. I only used the checkout for tagging to ensure no other edits found their way into the tag.