bat/doc/release-checklist.md

Release checklist

Dependencies

See this page for a good overview: https://deps.rs/repo/github/sharkdp/bat

• Optional: update dependencies with cargo update. This is also done by dependabot, so it is not strictly necessary.
• Install cargo-outdated. Check for outdated dependencies with cargo outdated --root-deps-only and decide for each of them whether we want to (manually) upgrade. This will require changes to Cargo.toml.

Version bump

• Update version in Cargo.toml. Run cargo build to update Cargo.lock. Make sure to git add the Cargo.lock changes as well.
• Find the current min. supported Rust version by running grep '^\s*MIN_SUPPORTED_RUST_VERSION' .github/workflows/CICD.yml.
• Update the version and the min. supported Rust version in README.md and doc/README-*.md. Check with git grep -i 'rust.*1\.' and git grep -i '1\..*rust'.
• Update CHANGELOG.md. Introduce a section for the new release.

Update syntaxes and themes (build assets)

• Install the latest master version (cargo install -f --path .) and make sure that it is available on the PATH (bat --version should show the new version).
• Run assets/create.sh and check in the binary asset files.

Documentation

• Review the -h and --help texts
• Review the man page

Pre-release checks

• Push all changes and wait for CI to succeed (before continuing with the next section).
• Optional: manually test the new features and command-line options. To do this, install the latest bat version again (to include the new syntaxes and themes).
• Run cargo publish --dry-run --allow-dirty to make sure that it will succeed later (after creating the GitHub release).

Release

• Create a tag and push it: git tag vX.Y.Z; git push origin tag vX.Y.Z. This will trigger the deployment via GitHub Actions.
• Go to https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/releases/new to create the new release. Select the new tag and also use it as the release title. For the release notes, copy the corresponding section from CHANGELOG.md and possibly add additional remarks for package maintainers. Publish the release.
• Check if the binary deployment works (archives and Debian packages should appear when the CI run for the Git tag has finished).
• Publish to crates.io by running cargo publish in a clean repository. The safest way to do this is to clone a fresh copy.

Post-release

• Prepare a new (empty) "unreleased" section at the top of CHANGELOG.md.