Developer Guide
Releasing new versions
Releasing new versions can be done in two different ways
automatically
manually
In this document I’ll outline the steps required for manual release.
Version commit
The version commit is the first step in releasing a new version. This can be done in a later step, but for ease-of-release I’m putting it at the beginning.
To do this, first decide that you want to release a new version and that all commits for that release are in the branch you’re interested in releasing. We do all work on the development branch.
Good, you’re now ready.
The final commit will happen now and it is a simple one. You need to change the following file.
f5/__init__.py
In this file is a single line that specifies the current version of the SDK. For example,
# Copyright 2016 F5 Networks Inc.
#
# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
# You may obtain a copy of the License at
#
# http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
#
# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
# limitations under the License.
#
__version__ = '3.0.1'
Your job is to increment that number wisely. What is “wisely”? It means that it is your duty to know if the fixes and additions in the release warrant a,
major version change
minor version change
patch version change
The details of each of these is described here
Let’s assume that we only had a minor release. In that situation, we would change the version line to look like this.
__version__ = '3.0.2'
With this change made, add it and commit it back to Github. This is the last commit before releasing.
Additionally, since this is the last commit, it is important that you tag this release at the current commit. Therefore, you should additionally issue this command,
git tag v3.0.2
And also push that tag upstream because it is what you will tell Github to release from.
git push v3.0.2 upstream
Release draft
Now that your release is staged (code-wise) upstream, it is time to begin the release documentation. The primary vehicle for this is Github Releases.
The release URL can be found here,
Your job is to click the Draft a new release button at the top right of the page. When you do this, you will be presented with a screen that asks you for
Tag version
Release title
Describe this release
Additionally, under the description there is an area where you can drag-and-drop binary files for release.
To fill in the necessary information, first, click the Tag version box and select the name of the tag you created in the last step. It should be at the top of the list.
Next, fill in the release title. Generally speaking, the value we put in here is
Release version __YOUR_VERSION__
Next comes the description of the release. In this description we put some of the highlights of the release. You can refer to older releases to get different examples of what is required.
After you have filled out the above information, you want to click the Save draft button. Do not (yet) click the Publish release button. We do this because there are often other contributors who want to add release notes.
Once you are sure that you are done with all the release draft information from all the contributors, you can revisit this page and click the Publish release button.
Code release - Setup
Since this is the manual version of the release process, the following is only relevant when you are doing this by hand.
The first step is setup of the utility that we use to push the information to the public PyPi servers. That utility is twine and can be installed as follows
pip install twine
Configuration of twine is easy. The only thing you need to do is to refer to the template below and put its contents into you ~/.pypirc file.
[distutils]
index-servers =
pypi
pypitest
[pypi]
username=f5networks
password=MyPassword
[pypitest]
repository=https://test.pypi.org/legacy/
username=f5networks
password=MyPassword
The only information above that you will need to provide is the password value. The other information is already public knowledge.
With this information in place, let’s build the source code for release to PyPi
Code release - Build
Building code is done using two commands
python setup.py sdist
python f5-sdk-dist/build_pkgs.py
md5(sum) f5-sdk-dist/deb_dist/__PACKAGE__.deb > f5-sdk-dist/deb_dist/__PACKAGE__.deb.md5
md5(sum) f5-sdk-dist/rpms/build/__PACKAGE__.rpm > f5-sdk-dist/rpms/build/__PACKAGE__.rpm.md5
You must run the above commands in the order they are provided.
The first command is responsible for building the source tarball that will be uploaded to PyPi and used for the rpm and deb packages we will build next.
Running the first command will produce a new directory called dist. In this directory you will find a single tarball. This is the file that will be uploaded to PyPi.
Next, you will want to build the rpm and deb files, as well as the md5 files that will accompany them. These files will be published on github with the release notes.
Run the second command mentioned above. When it runs, it will want to create a couple of Docker containers. These are Redhat and Debian based containers that allow us to build the necessary packages.
For example,
SEA-ML-RUPP1:f5-common-python trupp$ python f5-sdk-dist/build_pkgs.py
['/private/tmp/f5-common-python/f5-sdk-dist']
Successfully constructed /private/tmp/f5-common-python/setup.cfg and
/private/tmp/f5-common-python/f5-sdk-dist/deb_dist/stdeb.cfg
Building packages...
For Debian...
For Redhat...
Completed package builds...
Initiating install tests...
Testing Packages...
Completed install tests
SEA-ML-RUPP1:f5-common-python trupp$
Doing the above will drop new rpm and deb files in the following directories,
f5-sdk-dist/rpms/build/
f5-sdk-dist/deb_dist/
The packages additionally need MD5 hash files to accompany them in a release to allow customers downloading them to be able to verify that what they downloaded are the real files we published.
To generate the necessary MD5 hash files, refer to the md5 commands above.
Note
I’ve included both the Mac (md5) and Linux (md5sum) variants of the MD5 hashing command in the above list. There is not a command literally called md5(sum).
Running the above md5 commands (supplementing your rpm and deb names for __PACKAGE__) will create the necessary .md5 files.
Code release - Upload
You now have all the artifacts you need to upload. Let’s go over them again, using the example that we’ve been using up to this point (3.0.2)
dist/f5-sdk-3.0.2.tar.gz
f5-sdk-dist/deb_dist/python-f5-sdk_3.0.2-1_1404_all.deb
f5-sdk-dist/deb_dist/python-f5-sdk_3.0.1-1_1404_all.deb.md5
f5-sdk-dist/rpms/build/f5-sdk-3.0.2-1.el7.noarch.rpm
f5-sdk-dist/rpms/build/f5-sdk-3.0.1-1.el7.noarch.rpm.md5
Let’s upload them!
First, let’s use twine to upload to PyPi. This is no more difficult than the following command.
SEA-ML-RUPP1:f5-common-python trupp$ twine upload dist/*
Uploading distributions to https://upload.pypi.org/legacy/
Uploading f5-sdk-3.0.1.tar.gz
SEA-ML-RUPP1:f5-common-python trupp$
Next, is the package files. To upload these, refer back to your Github Releases page; specifically to the release you made.
You should have the ability to Edit your release. On the editing page, near the bottom in the same location that it was when you first created the Draft, you will find the area to Attach files.
To attach the necessary files, drag and drop them from your filesystem to the Github page in the specified box.
Note
Having trouble reaching a directory on Mac? Open a terminal, change to the directory you want, and then type open .. This will open up Finder at the exact location you are at and will allow you to drag files to the browser.
With the files attached, you can now click the Update release button.
Cake and beer
With the above steps complete, you can consider the f5-sdk officially released.
It is important that you do at least one download of the new code to make sure that what you released was entirely accurate. You can do this in a virtualenv or a Docker container or anything that you have handy.
pip install --upgrade f5-sdk
The above command should succeed and allow you to use the SDK as you normally would.