How to make a release

Stable releases of the OHRRPGCE have often happen rather chaotically. This article is an attempt to plan a cleaner process for future releases.

• Announce the approach of a release on the mailing list.
• When the code is suitably stable, announce an RC1 release candidate on the forums. The first RC is just a link to the latest nightly wip.
  • Wait for the testers have had enough time to find bugs in the RC1 and the developers have had time to fix them in the wip. (1-2 weeks?)
• Create the stable branch
  • First make sure that plotdictionary.html has been updated on the wip trunk. We frequently branch without doing this.
  • First make sure that whatsnew.txt is updated with all the appropriate info.
  • Actually create the branch. (For cleanest results it may help do do this in a brand new clean working copy)
  • change the release codename in codename.txt
  • Test compiling in the branch.
  • Test the windows distrib.bat script in the branch.
  • Test the linux distrib.sh script in the branch.
    • note that the debian packaging scripts for wandering hamster will need a path adjusted.
• Build and upload a second release candidate RC2 from the branch
  • (James Only!) upload-release.bat streamlines this, but for anybody other than James to use it they have to edit it to use a different web server login.
  • Announce RC2 on the forums with a link to the new release candidate in http://hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/archive/
  • Wait for the testers have had enough time to find bugs in the RC2 and the developers have had time to fix them in the wip. (<1 week?)
  • Re-run distrib.bat and re-upload the results each time a bug is fixed on the branch.
• Declare the release stable.
  • Update dates in whatsnew.txt README-game.txt and README-custom.txt (don't forget to update whatsnew.txt on the wip trunk also!)
  • re-run distrib.bat and distrib.sh
  • (James Only!) run script/ohrstable.sh to update the web server symlinks to point to the newest files.
  • (James Only!) delete the RC2 files so they don't clutter up the archive directory on the web server
  • Update the wiki
• Double check for any fixes on the branch that still need to be copied over to the wip trunk.
• Any further fixes on the branch can go in a +1 release at some later date