Releasing Minetest
<celeron55> oh god this release-making stuff... <celeron55> horrible, horrible work
Before releasing
Usually a feature freeze for one week is announced in #minetest-dev. New features aren't accepted in this time and people focus on finding and fixing bugs.
The feature freeze and release date is set by core developers.
The Process
This is mostly done by several core developers.
Update version in source
Define a new version number in CMakeLists.txt and update doc/lua-api.txt. Comment the line that sets VERSION_PATCH to ${VERSION_PATCH}-dev. Commit.
Build Windows version
Visual Studio 2010 currently makes best results.
Usually built by xyz.
They have included sound, gettext, cURL and TTF support.
Be sure that the windows build works before continue to do anything!
Tweak Windows package a bit
Include msvcr100.dll and wrap_oal.dll in the package (bin/). The latter is one of the OpenAL DLLs that the CMake install scripts are currently missing.
Include minetest_game.
Upload Windows package to somewhere
Previously packages were uploaded to GitHub, but since then (2012-12) GitHub has ceased the functionality, and a new host must be found (document here). The packages take up roughly 60GB/month of bandwidth.
Since 0.4.5 the packages are hosted by xyz at minetest.ru.
Since 0.4.8 Windows packages are hosted at github: https://github.com/minetest/minetest/releases.
Update branches and tags of minetest and minetest_game on github
See previous tags. Use the same tag for all of them; eg. "0.4.4".
Update links on minetest.net
Some people from the community can edit the minetest.net page (celeron55, PilzAdam, rubenwardy, BlockMen, Jordach)
Write a release notice
Usually a new topic in the News section of the forum. Changelog can be found here.
Update stuff on launchpad to get Ubuntu builds for the new version
Juhani Numminen hasn't been around in a long while, so celeron55 or PilzAdam must update Launchpad.
Notify other known package maintainers
- emptty (@freenode) maintains debian packages
- Zeitgeist_/damiel (@freenode) proxy-mantainer for minetest in Gentoo
TODO: Find more
Reenable -dev version suffix
Uncomment the line around CMakeLists.txt:20 that sets VERSION_PATCH to ${VERSION_PATCH}-dev. Commit.