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How to do a release

Update changelog and Cargo versions

Send a PR similar to https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj/pull/5215. Feel free to copy-edit the changelog in order to:

  • Populate "Release highlights" if relevant
  • Put more important items first so the reader doesn't miss them
  • Make items consistent when it comes to language and formatting
  • Catch any misplaced changelog items by looking at the CHANGELOG diff.

To get the CHANGELOG diff, you can run

jj log -r 'heads(tags())'  # Check that this shows the previous version
jj diff --from 'heads(tags())' --to main CHANGELOG.md

Make sure to add a corresponding reference link at the bottom of the CHANGELOG for the new version's tag. It should be the github url comparing the previous version tag with the new version tag (e.g. https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj/compare/v0.32.0...v0.33.0).

Producing the list of contributors is a bit annoying. The current suggestion is to run something like this:

root=$(jj log --no-graph -r 'heads(tags(glob:"v*.*.*") & ::trunk())' -T commit_id)
filter='
   map(.commits[] | select(.author.login | endswith("[bot]") | not))
   | unique_by(.author.login)
   | map("* \(.commit.author.name) (@\(.author.login))")
   | .[]
'
gh api "/repos/jj-vcs/jj/compare/$root...main" --paginate | jq -sr "$filter" | sort -f

https://docs.github.com/en/rest/commits/commits?apiVersion=2022-11-28#compare-two-commits

Alternatively, the list can be produced locally:

jj log --no-graph -r 'heads(tags())..main' -T '"* " ++ author ++ "\n"' | sort -fu

Then try to find the right GitHub username for each person and copy their name and username from the GitHub page for the person (e.g. https://github.com/martinvonz).

Get the PR through review and get it merged as usual.

Create a tag and a GitHub release

  1. Go to https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj/releases and click "Draft a new release"
  2. Click "Choose a tag" and enter "v0.\<number>.0" (e.g. "v0.26.0") to create a new tag
  3. Click "Target", then "Recent commits", and select the commit from your merged PR
  4. Use the name (e.g. "v0.26.0") as "Release title". Paste the changelog entries into the message body
  5. Check "Create a discussion for this release"
  6. Click "Publish release"

Publish the crates to crates.io

Go to a terminal and create a new clone of the repo 1:

cd $(mktemp -d)
jj git clone https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj
cd jj
jj new v0.<number>.0

Publish each crate:

(cd lib/proc-macros && cargo publish)
(cd lib && cargo publish)
(cd cli && cargo publish)

  1. We recommend publishing from a new clone because cargo publish will archive ignored files if they match the patterns in [include] (example), so it's a security risk to run it an existing clone where you may have left sensitive content in an ignored file. ↩