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.

Pre-requisites

• A git client installed and on your path
• Apache Ant installed and on your path (see BUILDING.txt in the root of the code repository for version requirements)
• The latest release of the minimum Java version that the Tomcat version runs on installed and on your path
• Windows OS (you can do it on Linux but it involves a lot more hassle)
• GnuPG installed
• A public key that is part of the Apache web of trust
• A reasonable internet connection (you will need to upload ~100MB)

Preliminary checks

• Check that the version numbers have been incremented after the previous release, as expected. (e.g. https://github.com/apache/tomcat/commit/9f1c4aae1ea29624aa70c10ca188083253f6f2d0#diff-d05193a10baf9408128c699650245e52)
• Check that the changelog file mentions your login name as release manager for this release (e.g. "Tomcat 7.0.94 (markt)").
• Check whether the KEYS file differs from https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/tomcat/tomcat-7/KEYS one. The latter one will be replaced after you do a release. Check that the KEYS file contains your public key.

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 git clone and switch to the correct branch
  • git clone https://github.com/apache/tomcat /c/releases/asf-tomcat
  • cd /c/releases/asf-tomcat
  • git checkout 7.0.x
  • git pull
• Edit build.properties and change the line version.suffix=-dev to version.suffix=
• Edit webapps\docs\changelog.xml and remove rtext="in development" from the latest version
• Commit these changes
  • git commit -a -m "Tag 7.0.94"
  • git tag 7.0.94
  • git push origin 7.0.94
• Check the diff mailed to the dev list

I found it simplest to keep this clone for tagging to ensure no other edits found their way into the tag.

Build the release

• mkdir /c/releases/TOMCAT_7_0_94
• git archive 7.0.94 | tar -x -C /c/releases/TOMCAT_7_0_94/

I'm using Git Bash for the above. Adjust as necessary for you choice of tools.

• Add a build.properties file with the following configuration (adjust paths for your environment)

execute.validate=true

execute.test.bio=true
execute.test.nio=true
execute.test.apr=true

test.haltonfailure=true

gpg.exec=C:/Program Files (x86)/GNU/GnuPG/gpg2.exe

base.path=C:/temp/libs

# Tomcat 7 currently requires both JDK 6 and JDK 7 to build a release
# JAVA_HOME system property used by Ant has to point to JDK 6 and this points to JDK 7
java.7.home=C:/Program Files (x86)/Java/jdk1.7.0_45

• ant release

Notes:

• GPG should be configured to use your Apache code signing key by default
• I always ensured c:/temp/libs was empty so that the build had to download all the dependencies

Upload the release

Upload the contents of TOMCAT_7_0_XX/output/release to https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/tomcat/tomcat-7/

Generate the Maven artifacts

See https://github.com/apache/tomcat/blob/7.0.x/res/maven/README.txt steps 1 to 3 (not step 4!)

Call a vote

• E.g. http://markmail.org/message/gvmbwocspnwb2dfe
• Increment the version number ready for the next tag (e.g. http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?view=revision&revision=1500094)

If the vote passes

•  svn mv https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/tomcat/tomcat-7/v7.0.XX https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/tomcat/tomcat-7/v7.0.XX

•  svn checkout --depth immediates https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/tomcat/tomcat-7/ 

  and update the KEYS file there to be the same as the one used for release. (The download page has links pointing to this file).

• Release the Maven artifacts (https://github.com/apache/tomcat/blob/7.0.x/res/maven/README.txt step 4)
• Wait for the mirrors to sync (upto 24 hours depending on what percentage of the mirrors you want to sync)
• Update the website (e.g. http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?view=revision&revision=1500109)
  Note: the index and oldnews pages are sorted by date. Thus the new announcement pops up to the top of the page.
• Update the docs (see http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/tomcat/site/trunk/README.txt)
• Announce the release (e.g. http://markmail.org/message/xyantb3ozzmucdjt) to users@t.a.o, cc dev@t.a.o, announce@t.a.o, announce@a.o
• Update the release date in the changelog to the date the files were copied to the the release area in yyyy-mm-dd format.
  E.g. "released 2013-05-03" (for stable versions), "beta, 2007-02-08" (for betas).
• Add the version number in Bugzilla
• Drop the artifacts for the previous release from https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/tomcat/tomcat-7/
• Add release data (version and date) to reporter.apache.org - https://reporter.apache.org/addrelease.html?tomcat

If the vote does not pass

• Update the release date in the changelog to "not released"
• Drop the artifacts from https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/tomcat/tomcat-7/
• Drop the maven artifacts from the staged maven repository