Sage Release Management
The first rule of release management, is that the release manager is in charge. They get to decide on whether or not any ticket goes into the next Sage release, gets closed, etc. If they feel like not merging a particular patch, spkg, or contribution from somebody, that is their right. If you don't like it, wait for another release manager. (Of course, the BDFL has final say.)
Contents
Overview
These are some notes on various aspects of the Sage release process. It is also worth reading Eric S. Raymond's article Software Release Practice HOWTO. The following serve as introductory materials to beginning release managers:
Release Management: Merging Patches --- An overview of merging patches.
Automatically Generating A Release Note Template --- Producing a release note.
See also this thread on the sage-release mailing list.
Mandatory builds
Sage is regularly built and doctested on various machines within the Sage compute cluster and the SkyNet cluster. The Sage compute cluster consists of the following machines:
bsd.math Mac OS X
rh.math Ubuntu
[boxen,sage].math Ubuntu
t2.math Solaris 10
The machine boxen.math hosts various Linux virtual machines for building Sage binaries. The SkyNet cluster consists of the following machines:
cicero Fedora
cleo Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server
eno Fedora
flavius Fedora
fulvia Solaris 10
iras SUSE
lena Fedora
mark Solaris 10
mark2 Solaris 10
sextus2 Fedora
taurus Fedora
Some contributors occasionally build/test Sage on machines within the GCC compile farm. If you are a developer of a free software project, such as Sage, you are encouraged to write to the relevant system administrator of that compile farm to request an account on that farm. See the GCC compile farm's page for more information.
The following lists a minimal set of machines on which Sage should be built and doctested prior to announcing an alpha or RC release to the sage-devel and sage-release mailing lists.
- bsd.math --- Mac OS X
- cleo --- Red Hat
- eno --- Fedora
- sage.math --- Ubuntu
- t2.math --- Solaris
Having built and doctested Sage on the above machines, you can then announce an alpha/RC release to the relevant lists. People are then encouraged to build/test Sage on their own machines, and even build/test Sage on all machines within the Sage and SkyNet clusters, and the GCC compile farm.
Doctesting on the sage.math cluster
When you run doctests with "make ptest" or "make ptestlong", Sage will by default use a number of threads equal to the number of cores. On sage.math, this is often inadvisable, so when running doctests, always use something like make ptest NUM_THREADS=16 (replace 16 with a sensible number; 24 minus the current load average will usually be considered "sensible")
Building on boxen.math
The machine boxen.math hosts a number of virtual machines that run various 32- and 64-bit Linux distributions. Here is a list of supported Linux distributions on boxen.math:
- CentOS 5.3 (32- and 64-bit) --- centos5.3-32 and centos5.3-64
- Debian 5.0 Lenny (32- and 64-bit) --- debian5-32 and debian5-64
- Fedora 11 (32- and 64-bit) --- fedora11-32 and fedora11-64
- Mandriva 2009.1 (32- and 64-bit) --- mandriva2009.1-32 and mandriva2009.1-64
- openSUSE 11.1 (32- and 64-bit) --- opensuse-11.1-32 and opensuse-11.1-64
- Ubuntu 9.04 (32- and 64-bit) --- ubuntu9.04-32 and ubuntu9.04-64
The following Windows XP virtual machines are also hosted on boxen.math:
- winxp1
- winxp2
- winxp3
Before starting the build process on the build farm, first login to boxen.math using either one of two methods shown below:
$ ssh -C -x -a <username>@boxen # use this syntax if you're # already login to the Sage cluster $ ssh -C -x -a <username>@boxen.math.washington.edu # this syntax is required if # you're not already login to the Sage cluster
Replace <username> with your username. Next, ensure that you have the privilege to run as the username wstein. If you are able to sudo as username wstein, then do so as follows:
$ sudo -H -u wstein bash
The option -H would set your home directory to that of username wstein, the option -u wstein is the username you want to sudo as (in this case it's wstein), and bash would login with the Bash shell. Delete all source tarballs in /home/wstein/farm/src and place the source tarball you want to build in /home/wstein/farm/src. Navigate to the directory /home/wstein/farm and run ./go, which would actually start the build process on the Linux virtualized guests. The results would appear in /home/wstein/farm/out/<version_number>/ as they complete. You can watch the build progress on all virtualized guests using
$ tail -f /home/wstein/farm/out/<version_number>/*
or watch the progress of a virtualized guest as follows:
$ tail -f /home/wstein/farm/out/<version_number>/<guest_name>.out
Press Control-C to quit watching.
Known issues:
- Both of the 32- and 64-bit Mandriva machines would fail trying to build Python, because the Python spkg won't build under nohup. Start a screen session, ssh into both boxes, and restart it by hand -- or, better yet, diagnose and fix the problem.
Building on SkyNet
Use /home/wstein/farm/go_skynet to start the build on SkyNet. The files appear in /home/wstein/build/logs/<version_number>. As of 4.0.2, eno and cleo works fine, but the rest would fail. You can restart the builds on cicero and iras by hand, and they should complete just fine.
Releasing source tarballs and binaries
You can use sage -sdist <version> to create a new source tarball, and sage -bdist <version> to create a new binary. These scripts are very particular about the formatting of version strings, see trac #6338. Both sage -sdist <version> and sage -bdist <version> take care of updating the Sage banner for you so you don't need to manually edit the file SAGE_ROOT/local/bin/sage-banner.
It's very useful to put the various bits of the release in /home/release on sage.math, and to follow a directory structure somewhat like this: http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/release/sage-4.5.2.alpha0 which includes a sage.math binary, source tarball, md5sums, a directory for upgrading, and the text of the release note. It's also nice to put Solaris/t2.math binaries there, too. Using a standard location for releases makes it easier for developers to follow things.
NOTE: When cutting a new rc or alpha release, make sure to always produce binaries for sage.math. This also applies to any stable release -- several people will make use of these. The download page for 64-bit Linux contains a text file called sage-x.y.z-sage.math.washington.edu-x86_64-Linux.txt. This file lists directories on sage.math where sage.math account holders are able to get a copy of a binary specifically built for that machine.
NOTE: After an sdist, one needs to call sage -br to rebuild the library. This is annoying, and should be fixed.
Release checklist
Here's a list of things you want to make sure to do before every release:
Check that sage starts (you can use local/bin/sage-starts or check by hand)
Check that notebook() works
Check that notebook(secure=True) works
Check that wiki() works
Check that the documentation builds, both the HTML and PDF versions.
Check that sage -startuptime works, and isn't worse than the last release.
Check that sage -upgrade works, at least from the last release.
Make sure to Valgrind Sage late in the release cycle if this is a major release.
Use sage -coverage to test that the coverage hasn't gone down.
- If any patches add files to the sage library itself, the release manager should check that the rules in MANIFEST.in include these files, or they will be missing from sage-x.x.x.spkg.
When a new package is added to the standard spkg repository, this usually involve corresponding changes in the files SAGE_ROOT/spkg/standard/deps and SAGE_ROOT/spkg/install. The updated standard spkg repository needs to be copied over to the master server on sagemath.org. Keep in mind that the standard spkg repository contains the file SAGE_ROOT/spkg/standard/deps so copying that repository over to the master server automatically copies the deps dependencies file. However, the file SAGE_ROOT/spkg/install must be manually copied over to the master server so it can be mirrored out.
- We should incorporate max timings into the automerge scripts. Maybe reject a ticket if it triples the testing time or something. It should also say "oh, and doctesting these files took more than twice as long as normal."
- Double check the release note and release tour.
Generate a release note using this script, which is also available at http://bitbucket.org/mvngu/rnotes/
When releasing the source version of a stable release, send a release announcement to sage-devel and sage-release. The release announcement should be accompanied with the release note. Upload the release note to http://www.sagemath.org/mirror/src/announce/ and prepend the HISTORY.txt file with that latest release note. This cumulative HISTORY.txt file should also be up on http://www.sagemath.org/mirror/src/announce/.
When releasing binaries for a particular stable version, send a release announcement to sage-announce. That release announcement should be accompanied with the release note, and it should also contain a link to the release tour.
- Notice, that the script "export" in ~/www-files/ in sagemath's home directory is capable of doing this automatically. it's input is the source tarball and the release notes file and it also updates the SPKGs and mirrors everything out.
Update the Mercurial repository at http://hg.sagemath.org
Optional Packages
If you don't know how, get a more senior release manager to do this part for you.
- Log in as user sagemath on boxen: $ sudo -H -u sagemath bash
- Update spkg in ~/www-files/packages/optional (the txt files are automatically updated, so don't worry about them).
- Run $ ~/www-files/packages/gen_html
- Copy the modified files to the master mirror: $ ~/mirror (you can check it before mirroring at sagemath.org/mirror/ )
- That's it!