osrm-backend/docs/releasing.md

Releasing a new OSRM version

We are using http://semver.org/ for versioning with major, minor and patch versions.

Guarantees

We are giving the following guarantees between versions:

Major version change

• There are no guarantees about compatiblity of APIs or datasets
• Breaking changes will be noted as BREAKING in the changelog

Minor version change

We may introduce forward-compatible changes: query parameters and response properties may be added in responses, but existing properties may not be changed or removed. One exception to this is the addition of new turn types, which we see as forward-compatible changes.

• Forward-compatible HTTP API
• Forward-compatible C++ library API
• Forward-compatible node-osrm API
• No compatiblity between OSRM datasets (needs new processing)

Patch version change

• No change of query parameters or response formats
• Compatible HTTP API
• Compatible C++ library API
• Compatible node-osrm API
• Compatible OSRM datasets

Release and branch management

• The master branch is for the bleeding edge development
• We create and maintain release branches x.y to control the release flow
• We create the release branch once we tagged the final version x.y.0 version, RCs go on master
• No minor or major version will be released without a code-equal release candidates
• For quality assurance, release candidates will be run on the demo server for 24 hours before releaseing the version proper
• Patch versions may be released without a release candidate
• We may backport fixes to older versions and release them as patch versions

Releasing a version

1. Check out the appropriate release branch x.y
2. Make sure all tests are passing (e.g. Travis CI gives you a :thumbs_up:)
3. Make sure CHANGELOG.md is up to date.
4. Make sure the OSRM version in CMakeLists.txt is up to date
5. Use an annotated tag to mark the release: git tag vx.y.z -a Body of the tag description should be the changelog entries.
6. Use npm run build-api-docs to generate the API documentation. Copy build/docs/* to https://github.com/Project-OSRM/project-osrm.github.com in the docs/vN.N.N/api directory
7. Push tags and commits: git push; git push --tags
8. Proceede with the node-osrm release as outlined in the repository.
9. If not a release-candidate: Write a mailing-list post to osrm-talk@openstreetmap.org to announce the release