Apache SkyWalking release guide

If you’re a committer, you can learn how to release SkyWalking in The Apache Way and start the voting process by reading this document.

Prerequisites

Add your GPG public key into the SkyWalking GPG KEYS file.

  • If you are a PMC member, use your Apache ID and password to log in this svn, and update the file. Don’t override the existing file.
  • If you are a committer, please ask a PMC member to help you.

Run the release script

The release script tools/releasing/release.sh automates the following steps:

  1. Verify GPG signer (@apache.org email required)
  2. Check required tools (gpg, svn, shasum, git, yq)
  3. Detect current version from pom.xml
  4. Calculate release version (strip -SNAPSHOT) and next version (bump minor)
  5. Clone the repository, build source and binary tarballs, GPG sign, SHA512 checksum
  6. Upload artifacts to SVN staging (https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/skywalking/{version})
  7. Generate the vote email (with sha512 checksums and submodule commit IDs filled in)
  8. Prepare next version PR (bump version, rotate changelog, update menu.yml, push branch)
cd tools/releasing
bash release.sh

The script is interactive — it confirms the GPG signer and version numbers before proceeding.

After the script completes, copy the generated vote email and send it to dev@skywalking.apache.org.

Call a vote in dev

The release script generates the vote email automatically. Send it to dev@skywalking.apache.org.

Vote Check

All PMC members and committers should check these before casting +1 votes.

  1. Features test.
  2. Source code and distribution package (apache-skywalking-x.y.z-src.tar.gz, apache-skywalking-bin-x.y.z.tar.gz, apache-skywalking-bin-x.y.z.zip) are found in https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/skywalking/x.y.z with .asc and .sha512.
  3. LICENSE and NOTICE are in the source code and distribution package.
  4. Check shasum -c apache-skywalking-apm-x.y.z-src.tgz.sha512.
  5. Check gpg --verify apache-skywalking-apm-x.y.z-src.tgz.asc apache-skywalking-apm-x.y.z-src.tgz
  6. Build a distribution package from the source code package (apache-skywalking-x.y.z-src.tar.gz) by following this doc.
  7. Check the Apache License Header. Run docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/github/workspace apache/skywalking-eyes header check. (No binaries in source codes)

The voting process is as follows:

  1. All PMC member votes are +1 binding, and all other votes are +1 but non-binding.
  2. If you obtain at least 3 (+1 binding) votes with more +1 than -1 votes within 72 hours, the release will be approved.

Publish the release

  1. Move source codes tar and distribution packages to https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/skywalking/.
> export SVN_EDITOR=vim
> svn mv https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/skywalking/x.y.z https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/skywalking
....
enter your apache password
....
  1. Public download source and distribution tar/zip with asc and sha512 are located in http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/skywalking/x.y.z/xxx. The Apache mirror path is the only release information that we publish.
  2. Update the website download page. http://skywalking.apache.org/downloads/ . Add a new download source, distribution, sha512, asc, and document links. The links can be found following rules (3) to (6) above.
  3. Add a release event on the website homepage and event page. Announce the public release with changelog or key features.
  4. Send ANNOUNCE email to dev@skywalking.apache.org, announce@apache.org. The sender should use the Apache email account.
Mail title: [ANNOUNCE] Apache SkyWalking x.y.z released

Mail content:
Hi all,

Apache SkyWalking Team is glad to announce the first release of Apache SkyWalking x.y.z.

SkyWalking: APM (application performance monitor) tool for distributed systems,
especially designed for microservices, cloud native and container-based architectures.

This release contains a number of new features, bug fixes and improvements compared to
version a.b.c(last release). The notable changes since x.y.z include:

(Highlight key changes)
1. ...
2. ...
3. ...

Please refer to the change log for the complete list of changes:
https://skywalking.apache.org/docs/main/vx.y.z/en/changes/changes/

Apache SkyWalking website:
http://skywalking.apache.org/

Downloads:
https://skywalking.apache.org/downloads/#SkyWalkingAPM

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/ASFSkyWalking

SkyWalking Resources:
- GitHub: https://github.com/apache/skywalking
- Issue: https://github.com/apache/skywalking/issues
- Mailing list: dev@skywalkiing.apache.org


- Apache SkyWalking Team

Publish the Docker images

We have a GitHub workflow to automatically publish the Docker images to Docker Hub after you set the version from pre-release to release, all you need to do is to watch that workflow and see whether it succeeds, if it fails, you can use the following steps to publish the Docker images in your local machine.

export SW_VERSION=x.y.z
git clone --depth 1 --branch v$SW_VERSION https://github.com/apache/skywalking.git
cd skywalking

svn co https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/skywalking/$SW_VERSION release # (1)

export CONTEXT=release
export HUB=apache
export OAP_NAME=skywalking-oap-server
export UI_NAME=skywalking-ui
export TAG=$SW_VERSION
export DIST=<the binary package name inside (1), e.g. apache-skywalking-apm-8.8.0.tar.gz>
make docker.push

Clean up the old releases

Once the latest release has been published, you should clean up the old releases from the mirror system.

  1. Update the download links (source, dist, asc, and sha512) on the website to the archive repo (https://archive.apache.org/dist/skywalking).
  2. Remove previous releases from https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/skywalking/.

Update the Quick Start Versions

We hosted the SkyWalking Quick Start script, which is a shell script that helps users to download and start SkyWalking quickly. The versions of OAP and BanyanDB are hard-coded in the script, so you need to update the versions in the script.

Update the versions for shell script and powershell script.