Releasing

Releasing a new version of Connaisseur includes the following steps:

• check readiness
• adding a new version tag
• creating a changelog from commit messages
• creating a PR from develop (new version) to master (current version)
• pushing a new version of the Connaisseur image to Docker Hub
• merging in the PR & push tag
• creating release page
• shoot some trouble

Check readiness

Before starting the release, make sure everything is ready and in order. See that all tests are running smoothly. Check that documentation changes show up correctly here. Make sure the Connaisseur version is incremented correctly according to the changes. See if the docs announcements should be adjusted here. Consider making a GitHub Discussions announcement.

Add new tag

Before adding the new tag, make sure the Connaisseur version is updated in the helm/values.yaml and applies the semantic versioning guidelines: fixes increment PATCH version, non-breaking features increment MINOR version, breaking features increment MAJOR version. Then add the tag (on develop branch) with git tag v<new-conny-version> (e.g. git tag v1.4.6).

Create changelog

A changelog text, including all new commits from one to another version, can be automatically generated using the scrips/changelogger.py script. You have to update the two ref1 and ref2 variables in the main method with the the old and new Git tags. So if you e.g. want to release a new version from v1.4.5 to v1.4.6, then you have to set ref1 = "v1.4.5" and ref2 = "v1.4.6". Then simply run python scripts/changelogger.py > CHANGELOG.md, storing the changelog in a new file CHANGELOG.md (we won't keep this file, it's just for convenient storing purpose). This file will include all new commits, categorized by their type (e.g. fix, feat, docs, etc.), but may include some mistakes so take a manual look if everything looks in order.

Things to look out for:

• multiple headings for the same category
• broken pull request links
• None appended on end of line

Create PR

Create a PR from develop to master, putting the changelog text as description and wait for someone to approve it.

Push new Connaisseur image

When the PR is approved and ready to be merged, first push the new Connaisseur image to Docker Hub, as it will be used in the release pipeline. Run make docker to build the new version of the docker image and then DOCKER_CONTENT_TRUST=1 docker image push securesystemsengineering/connaisseur:<new-version> to push and sign it. You'll obviously need the right private key and passphrase for doing so. You also need to be in the list of valid signers for Connaisseur. If not already (you can check with docker trust inspect securesystemsengineering/connaisseur --pretty) you'll need to contact Philipp Belitz.

Merge PR

Run git checkout master to switch to the master branch and then run git merge develop to merge develop in. Then run git push and git push --tags to publish all changes and the new tag.

Create release page

Finally a release on GitHub should be created. Go to the Connaisseur releases page, then click Draft a new release. There you have to enter the new tag version, a title (usually Version <new-version>) and the changelog text as description. Then click Publish release and you're done! (You can delete the CHANGELOG.md file now. Go and do it.)

Shoot trouble

Be aware that this isn't a completely fleshed out, highly available, hyper scalable and fully automated workflow, backed up by state-of-the-art blockchain technology and 24/7 incident response team coverage with global dominance! Not yet at least. For now things will probably break, so make sure that in the end everything looks to be in order and the new release can be seen on the GitHub page, tagged with Latest release and pointing to the correct version of Connaisseur. Good Luck!