# Releasing

This document describes our release process, and contains the steps to be followed by an OpenZeppelin maintainer at the several stages of a release.

We release a new version of OpenZeppelin monthly. Release cycles are tracked in the [issue milestones](https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-solidity/milestones).

Each release has at least one release candidate published first, intended for community review and any critical fixes that may come out of it. At the moment we leave 1 week between the first release candidate and the final release.

Before starting make sure to verify the following items.
* Your local `master` branch is in sync with your upstream remote.
* Your repo is clean, particularly with no untracked files in the contracts and tests directories. Verify with `git clean -n`.


## Creating the release branch

We'll refer to a release `vX.Y.Z`.

```
git checkout master
git checkout -b release-vX.Y.Z
```

## Creating a release candidate

Once in the release branch, change the version string in `package.json`, `package-lock.json` and `ethpm.json` to `X.Y.Z-rc.R`. (This will be `X.Y.Z-rc.1` for the first release candidate.) Commit these changes and tag the commit as `vX.Y.Z-rc.R`.

```
git add package.json package-lock.json ethpm.json
git commit -m "Release candidate vX.Y.Z-rc.R"
git tag -a vX.Y.Z-rc.R
git push upstream release-vX.Y.Z
git push upstream vX.Y.Z-rc.R
```

Draft the release notes in our [GitHub releases](https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-solidity/releases). Make sure to mark it as a pre-release! Try to be consistent with our previous release notes in the title and format of the text. Release candidates don't need a detailed changelog, but make sure to include a link to GitHub's compare page.

Once the CI run for the new tag is green, publish on npm.

```
npm publish
```

Publish the release notes on GitHub and ask our community manager to announce the release candidate on at least Slack and Twitter.

## Creating the final release

```
git checkout release-vX.Y.Z
```

Change the version string in `package.json`, `package-lock.json` and `ethpm.json` removing the "-rc.R" suffix. Commit these changes and tag the commit as `vX.Y.Z`.

```
git add package.json package-lock.json ethpm.json
git commit -m "Release vX.Y.Z"
git tag -a vX.Y.Z
git push upstream vX.Y.Z
```

Draft the release notes in GitHub releases. Try to be consistent with our previous release notes in the title and format of the text. Make sure to include a detailed changelog.

Once the CI run for the new tag is green, publish on npm.

```
npm publish
```

Publish the release notes on GitHub and ask our community manager to announce the release!

## Merging the release branch

After the final release, the release branch should be merged back into `master`. This merge must not be squashed, because it would lose the tagged release commit, so it should be merged locally and pushed.

```
git checkout master
git merge --no-ff release-vX.Y.Z
git push upstream master
```

The release branch can then be deleted on GitHub.