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 9 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
• Operating system
  • Windows just works
  • Linux also requires Wine (standard package manager version should be fine)
  • MacOS also requires Wine (see below)
• GnuPG installed
• A public key that is part of the Apache web of trust
• A reasonable internet connection (you will need to upload ~100MB)

The above can be accomplished on a Windows 10 Virtual Machine from Microsoft's Edge Development resources. Download + unpack the archive for your VM software and launch the VM. Login, open a PowerShell.exe window as Administrator, and installed Chocolatey:

PS C:\Users\IEUser> Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

Once Chocolatey is installed, you can install all the above prerequisites at once:

PS C:\Users\ISUser> choco install git svn adoptopenjdk11 ant gnupg sed xsltproc

This command will run for a while, and ask you repeatedly if it's okay to run "chocolateyInstall.ps1", which you will have to do to proceed. Once the above command has completed, you have all the software prerequisites installed and on your PATH. Well, once you quit PowerShell and launch a new CMD.EXE or PowerShell window, of course

wine on MacOS

12.x (Monterey), 13.x (Ventura), and 14.x (Sonoma)

• Install homebrew if you haven't already.
• Install Wine 9.0 using brew install --no-quarantine wine-stable (ref)
• If you are using an Apple Silicon-based Mac, you will need to /usr/sbin/softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license (ref) to be able to run the NSIS installer-generator.

11.x.x (Big Sur) - old instructions

Install homebrew if you haven't already.

Install wine-crossover from https://github.com/Gcenx/homebrew-wine

Configure a 32-bit wine environment using:

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 winecfg

Then before you start the release ensure the following environment variables are set:

export WINEARCH=win32
export WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32

Preliminary checks

• Check that the version numbers have been incremented after the previous release, as expected. (e.g. https://github.com/apache/tomcat/commit/cec14f9c33af9da271c9681bf6b343c61b6d055a)
• Check that the changelog file mentions your login name as release manager for this release (e.g. "Tomcat 9.0.94 (markt)").
• Check whether the KEYS file differs from https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/tomcat/tomcat-9/KEYS one. The latter one will be replaced after you do a release. Check that the KEYS file contains your public key.
• Check that the full build still works (ant release, preferably). Check that Buildbot builds (https://tomcat.apache.org/ci.html#Buildbot) are green.
• Prepare your build environment:
  
  • Add a build.properties file (or, better yet, keep this file in your ~/build.properties if you have a dedicated build machine) 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 #gpg.exec=/usr/bin/gpg base.path=C:/temp/libs #base.path=~/tomcat-libs # Enable the following if the DigiCert ONE magic is all set up, including ~/.digicertone/pkcs11properties.cfg codesigning.storepass=apikey|keystorepath|keystorepassword do.codesigning=true

    
    

Build the release + create git tag

The aim is to create a copy of the current trunk but without the "-dev" appended to the end of the version number. All artifacts required for repeatable builds will be included as well.

• Perform an git clone and switch to the correct branch
  • git clone https://github.com/apache/tomcat /c/releases/asf-tomcat or git clone -b 9.0.x git clone https://github.com/apache/tomcat /c/releases/asf-tomcat
  • cd /c/releases/asf-tomcat
  • git checkout 9.0.x
  • git pull
• (Hint: using ant pre-release  may save you the following step, plus steps 2-3 in the Maven release process.)

• Edit "build.properties.default" and change the lines after "# ----- Reproducible builds -----" to a new value. (NOTE: this is done by 'ant pre-release')

  • Note that the value of ant.tstamp.now property is in seconds (unlike the value returned by System.currentTimeMillis() method which is milliseconds, see bug 65527 for how this happened for Tomcat 8.5.70).
    The value can be printed in a Bash shell with the following command:
    date +%s
    To print seconds since epoch, and date and time in human-readable format in UTC time zone:
    date -u '+%s %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z'

• Edit "build.properties.default" and change the line version.dev=-dev to version.dev= (NOTE: this is done by 'ant pre-release')

  • This can be done with sed -i.bak "s/^version.dev=.*/version.dev=/" build.properties.default
• Edit "webapps/docs/changelog.xml" and replace rtext="in development" with rtext="Release in progress" for the version being released (NOTE: this is done by 'ant pre-release')
  
  • Remember that notepad.exe will remove UTF-8 Byte-Order Marks (BOMs). Use write.exe or Notepad++ instead.
• Build the release

  • ant release

• Commit these changes

  • git add --all (to pick-up the repeatable build artifacts in addition to the content-changes from above)

  • git commit --all --message "Tag 9.0.94"
  • git tag 9.0.94
  • git push origin 9.0.94
• Check the diff mailed to the dev list

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
• This does not include the signing of the Windows installer, which must be done using https://one.digicert.com/ and https://infra.apache.org/digicert-use.html which is automated during the build process once the Tomcat PMC key is accessible by using jsign. (Working! Try setting do.codesigning=true in build.properties).
• The logs for the Windows signing are in ~/.signingmanager/logs on Linux
• If you get an error signing the installer/uninstaller "Cannot load keystore ~/.digicertone/pkcs11properties.cfg" then you probably don't have your environment variables (or codesigning.storepass property) set properly.

Upload the release

Upload the contents of TOMCAT_9_0_XX/output/release to https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/tomcat/tomcat-9/

• svn checkout https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/tomcat/tomcat-9
• cp -r TOMCAT_9_0_XX/output/release/* tomcat-9
• cd tomcat-9 && svn add v* && svn commit -m "Upload vX.Y.Z for voting"

Generate the Maven artifacts

See https://github.com/apache/tomcat/blob/9.0.x/res/maven/README.txt steps 1 to 3 for the release (not step 4 until the vote passes !)

Call a vote

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

Cleaning Up

• Reset to the 9.0.x branch (git reset HEAD~ && git checkout build.properties.default && git checkout webapps/docs/changelog.xml && rm -f build.properties.release res/maven/mvn.properties.release res/install-win/Uninstall.exe.sig res/install-win/tomcat-installer.exe.sig)

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

To get a clean copy of the release (e.g. for testing):

• mkdir /c/releases/TOMCAT_9_0_94
• git archive 9.0.94 | tar -x -C /c/releases/TOMCAT_9_0_94/

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

If the vote passes

• Send a recap "[VOTE][RESULT]" email to the vote thread on the dev list with the vote counts.

• 
  

  svn mv https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.XX https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.XX

  
  

• 
  

  svn checkout --depth immediates https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/tomcat/tomcat-9/

  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/9.0.x/res/maven/README.txt step 4)
• Wait for the release artifacts to appear in these locations:
  • https://downloads.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-[v]/
  • https://dlcdn.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-[v]/
• Update the website (e.g. https://svn.apache.org/viewvc?view=revision&revision=1901819)
  Note: only modify the xdocs/ files, then use ant docs  to generate the HTML.
  Note: the index and oldnews pages are sorted by date. Thus the new announcement pops up to the top of the page.
  Note: using tools/update-version.sh oldver newver releasedate from the 'site' project may help you with almost all of the website updates below.
  • Update the build.properties.default file to ensure the correct release is listed.
  • Update download page (update "[define v]" macro for the new version)
  • Update whichversion page (the current version number).
  • Update doap_Tomcat.rdf file (version number and release date).
  • Update docs/tomcat-[v]-doc/changelog.html to set the release date to the date the files were copied to the release area in yyyy-MM-dd format ("beta, 2007-02-28" for betas).
  • Update migration page (versions in "configuration file differences" comparison form).
    • Notable changes that change behaviour and may require action when upgrading from the previous release may be added to the "noteable changes" section on the migration page.
  • Move old announcement to the top of the oldnews page.
  • Add announcement for the new release to the top of the front page (index).

  • Update the javadocs (see https://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
• Add the version number in Bugzilla (https://bz.apache.org/bugzilla/ → Administration → Products / versions)
• Drop the artifacts for the previous release from https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/tomcat/tomcat-[v]/
• 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-9/
• Drop the maven artifacts from the staged maven repository