Steps for an official release

Overview

Steps detailing a release (4.2.2 is given as an example).

1. Create a rel-422 branch from master in the git repo.

• Login into the sourceforge shell and go to the git repo and type:

git branch rel-422 master

2. Release an online development demo that uses the rel-422 branch and updates daily.

• Also provide links for downloading rel-422 daily builds/packages(zip and tarball) to allow testing of installation and upgrading by testers

3. Publish installation, upgrade, and downloading instructions

• Installation documention
• Upgrade documentation
• Also update the Documentation/INSTALL file

5. Bug fix and finalize the rel-422 branch.

• Update the copyright/acknowledgements page by copying the copyright page from HERE to acknowledge_license_cert.html in openemr codebase

6. Create a list of new features in the rel-422 branch (since the last official release)

• Page for maintaining the new feature lists.

7. Prepare files for the Ubuntu/debian package

• Ensure following files are updated at openemr/contrib/util/ubuntu_package_scripts/production/ in codebase:

• control

• Update Version
• Update Installed-Size (just estimate it, doesn't need to be accurate)
• Add new package dependencies (if pertinent, for example in 4.1.0, adding php5-soap and also a Pre-Depends:debconf)

• README.Debian

• Change the dates at bottom of file to release date (use date -R to get correctly formatted date).

• changelog.Debian

• Add entry for new version:

openemr (4.2.2-1) stable; urgency=low

  * New upstream version

 -- Brady Miller <brady@sparmy.com>  Fri, 25 Mar 2011 22:46:08 -0700

• copyright

• Add current date near top (use date -R to get correctly formatted date)
• Modify the copyright years (two of them), if needed

• preinst

• Update the algorithm to upgrade the previous version correctly

8. Release rel-422 branch by tagging in git repo with v4_2_2.

• Things to remember before tagging the release.

• Remove -dev from $v_tag (make it blank) in the version.php file
• Ensure the 'allow_debug_language' global in locale section in library/globals.inc.php is defaulted to 0

• Login into the sourceforge shell and go to the git repo and type:

git tag v4_2_2 rel-422

9. Build the tar.gz, zip and deb packages from v4_2_2.

Use script.

10. Release packages on sourceforge

• Upload via Project Admin
• Upload release and a release notes file
• Set file properties appropriately

11. Announce Release

Use the follow social channels to announce the release in ~140 characters or less with a link to the formal release marketing piece or, if the release is a minor or patch release, a link to the wiki release changelog.

• Sourceforge
• Twitter
• Facebook
• google+
• Diaspora
• Linkedin

Update the OpenEMR Wikipedia entry:

• Wikipedia

If the release is a major release (as opposed to minor or patch releases), it is best to put together a nice marketing piece describing the release changes (screenshots are encouraged with new features!). Use http://www.openhealthnews.com/hotnews/openemr-v412-planned-release as inspiration. This release announcement should be posted on the following sites:

• Linuxmednews
• OpenHealthNews
• HackerNews

TODO: are there any other OSS sites that would be interested in having OpenEMR releases pop up in their feeds?