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forgejo-docs/docs/developer/RELEASE.md
Earl Warren ba7b5de019 developer: release process: rewrite and LTS toolchain 
* do not include patch releases in the release schedule
* fix the Gitea compatibility of 7.0 & 8.0
* change the feature freeze from two to three weeks. See
  * https://codeberg.org/forgejo/discussions/issues/180
	* https://codeberg.org/forgejo/discussions/issues/187
* remove cutting a release in favor of copy/pasting previous
  checklists
* remove release notes as it is not done on a rolling basis
* move the runner publication down as it was in the middle
  of the release process sections
* reminder of LTS toolchain upgrades
2024-07-04 21:15:04 +00:00

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title license
Release management CC-BY-SA-4.0

Release cycle

Forgejo stable releases are published on a fixed schedule, every quarter.

Date Version Feature freeze Release date End Of Life
2024 Q1 7.0+gitea-1.21 (LTS) 23 April 2024 16 July 2025
2024 Q2 8.0+gitea-1.22 1 July 2024 17 July 2024 16 October 2024
2024 Q3 9.0+gitea-A.B 25 September 2024 16 October 2024 15 January 2025
2024 Q4 X.Y+gitea-A.B 25 December 2024 15 January 2025 16 April 2025
2025 Q1 X.Y+gitea-A.B (LTS) 26 March 2025 16 April 2025 14 July 2026
2025 Q2 X.Y+gitea-A.B 25 June 2025 16 July 2025 15 October 2025
2025 Q3 X.Y+gitea-A.B 24 September 2025 15 October 2025 14 January 2026
2025 Q4 X.Y+gitea-A.B 24 December 2025 14 January 2026 15 April 2026
2026 Q1 X.Y+gitea-A.B (LTS) 25 March 2026 15 April 2026 14 July 2027
2026 Q2 X.Y+gitea-A.B 24 June 2026 15 July 2026 14 October 2026

Stable release support

Bug fixes and security fixes are backported to the latest stable release.

Long Term Support (LTS)

The first quarter release of the year is LTS. Critical bug fixes and security fixes are backported to the latest LTS release.

Experimental releases

Experimental releases are published daily in forgejo-experimental organization. They are built from the tip of the branch of each stable release. For instance:

  • forgejo is X.Y-test where X.Y is the major and minor number of the next stable release.
  • v8.0/forgejo is 8.0-test
  • v7.0/forgejo is 7.0-test

Release numbering

The Forgejo release numbers are compliant with Semantic Versioning. They are followed by the Gitea release number with which it is compatible. For instance:

  • Forgejo v7.0.5+gitea-1.21.0 is compatible with Gitea v1.21.0.

The release candidates are built of the stable branch and published with the -test suffix:

  • Forgejo v7.0-test
  • Forgejo v8.0-test
  • Forgejo v8.1-test
  • etc.

Stable release process

The TL;DR: to publish a vX.Y.Z release is to:

Create a milestone and a check list

  • Create a Forgejo vX.Y.Z milestone set to the date of the release
  • Create an issue named [RELEASE] Forgejo vX.Y.Z with a description that includes a list of what needs to be done for the release with links to follow the progress
  • Set the milestone of this issue to Forgejo vX.Y.Z
  • Close the milestone when the release is complete

Feature freeze

  • Three weeks before the release date only bug fixes can be merged

Cutting a release

Create a new issue based on the checklist of the previous release (for instance v8.0.0).

Forgejo release building and testing

When Forgejo is released, artefacts (packages, binaries, etc.) are first published by the CI/CD pipelines in the https://codeberg.org/forgejo-experimental organization, to be downloaded and verified to work.

It will trigger a build workflow that:

If the build fails, the logs of the workflow can be found in https://codeberg.org/forgejo-integration/forgejo/actions for debugging. Once the build is successful, it must be copied to https://codeberg.org/forgejo-experimental.

It will trigger a publish workflow that:

To verify the container images, the end-to-end integration tests can be used. Push a branch with the location of the release under test to run a collection of test workflows.

Reach out to packagers and users to manually verify the release works as expected.

Forgejo release publication

It will trigger a workflow to:

Website update

DNS update

  • Update the release.forgejo.org TXT record that starts with forgejo_versions= to be forgejo_versions=vX.Y.Z

LTS toolchain upgrades

The Forgejo toolchain relies on Go OCI images based on Alpine. Only the last two Alpine versions are supported and will be EOL before the Forgejo LTS. In order to receive security updates the toolchain needs to be upgraded to a supported Alpine and Go version because it goes EOL.

Automated experimental releases

The Forgejo development and stable branches are pushed daily to the forgejo-integration. It triggers the release build workflow which creates a new release for each updated branch, based on their latest commit:

  • the forgejo branch creates the X.Y-test release where X.Y is based on the most recent tag. For instance:
    • the tag v8.0.0-dev will create the 8.0-test release
    • the tag v8.1.0-dev will create the 8.1-test release
  • the v*/forgejo branches create X.Y-test releases where X.Y is based on their name. For instance:
    • the branch v7.0/forgejo will create the 7.0-test release
    • the branch v7.1/forgejo will create the 7.1-test release

Forgejo release mirror

The https://code.forgejo.org/forgejo/forgejo repository is a read-only mirror updated daily with the release assets and the branches from https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo.

Forgejo runner publication

The release is built on https://code.forgejo.org/forgejo-integration/runner, which is a mirror of https://code.forgejo.org/forgejo/runner.

The release is published on https://forgejo.octopuce.forgejo.org/forgejo/runner, which is a mirror of https://code.forgejo.org/forgejo-integration/runner. It has no public IP and its role is to copy and sign release artifacts.

If publishing the release needs debug, it can be done manually:

It can also be done from the CLI with forgejo-runner exec and providing the secrets from the command line.

Release signing keys management

A GPG master key with no expiration date is created and shared with members of the Owners team via encrypted email. A subkey with a one year expiration date is created and stored in the secrets repository (openpgp/20??-release-team.gpg), to be used by the release pipeline. The public master key is stored in the secrets repository and published where relevant (keys.openpgp.org for instance).

Securing the release token and cryptographic keys

For both the Forgejo runner and Forgejo itself, copying and signing the release artifacts (container images and binaries) happen on a Forgejo instance not publicly accessible to safeguard the token that has write access to the Forgejo repository as well as the cryptographic key used to sign the releases.

Master key creation

  • gpg --expert --full-generate-key
  • key type: ECC and ECC option with Curve 25519 as curve
  • no expiration
  • id: Forgejo Releases contact@forgejo.org
  • gpg --export-secret-keys --armor EB114F5E6C0DC2BCDD183550A4B61A2DC5923710 and send via encrypted email to Owners
  • gpg --export --armor EB114F5E6C0DC2BCDD183550A4B61A2DC5923710 > release-team.gpg.pub
  • gpg --keyserver keys.openpgp.org --send-keys EB114F5E6C0DC2BCDD183550A4B61A2DC5923710
  • commit to the secrets repository

Subkey creation and renewal

  • gpg --expert --edit-key EB114F5E6C0DC2BCDD183550A4B61A2DC5923710
  • addkey
  • key type: ECC (signature only)
  • elliptic curve Curve 25519
  • key validity: 18 months
  • update https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues/58 to schedule the renewal 12 months later
  • gpg --export --armor EB114F5E6C0DC2BCDD183550A4B61A2DC5923710 > openpgp/release-team.gpg.pub
  • commit to the secrets repository
  • gpg --keyserver keys.openpgp.org --send-keys EB114F5E6C0DC2BCDD183550A4B61A2DC5923710

Local sanity check

From the root of the secrets directory, assuming the master key for EB114F5E6C0DC2BCDD183550A4B61A2DC5923710 is already imported in the keyring.

There are a lot of contradictory information regarding the management of subkeys, with zillions ways of doing something that looks like it could work but creates situations that are close to impossible to figure out. Experimenting with the CLI, reading the gpg man page and using common sense is the best way to understand how it works. Reading the documentation or discussions on the net is highly confusing because it is loaded with 20 years of history, most of which is no longer relevant.

Here are a few notions that help understand how it works:

  • gpg --export-secret-subkeys --armor B3B1F60AC577F2A2! exports the secret key for the subkey B3B1F60AC577F2A2, the exclamation mark meaning "nothing else".
  • a keygrip is something that each private key has and that can be displayed with gpg --with-keygrip --list-key. It matters because each private key is associated with exactly one file in the private-keys-v1.d directory which is named after this keygrip. It is the best way to verify an unrelated private key was not accidentally included in the export of the subkey.
  • when a subkey is created, the public key for the master key must be published again because it includes the public key of this new subkey.
  • all the instructions that are published to instruct people to verify the signature of a release use the fingerprint of the master key. It will work although the release really is signed by the subkey and not the master key. This is the main benefit of using subkeys as it hides the rotation of the subkeys and does not require updating instructions everywhere every year.
  • whenever gpg starts working with a new directory, it will launch a gpg-agent daemon that will persist. If this directory is removed manually or modified it will confuse the daemon and the gpg command will misbehave in ways that can be very difficult to understand. When experimenting create a new directory but do not modify the files manually, even though some instructions on the net recommend doing so, for instance to remove a private key.
NEWKEY=????
#
# brand new GNUPGHOME, situation similar to the release pipeline
#
export GNUPGHOME=/tmp/tmpgpg1 ; mkdir $GNUPGHOME ; chmod 700 $GNUPGHOME
gpg --import openpgp/$(date +%Y --date='next year')-release-team.gpg
find $GNUPGHOME/private-keys-v1.d # only has **one** file named after the keygrip
# sign something
echo bar > /tmp/foo
gpg --detach-sig --output /tmp/foo.asc --default-key $NEWKEY --sign /tmp/foo
#
# brand new GNUPGHOME: situation similar to someone verifying the release signature is good
#
export GNUPGHOME=/tmp/tmpgpg1 ; mkdir $GNUPGHOME ; chmod 700 $GNUPGHOME
gpg --import release-team.gpg.pub
gpg --verify /tmp/foo.asc /tmp/foo

2024

  • gpg --export-secret-subkeys --armor B3B1F60AC577F2A2! > openpgp/2024-release-team.gpg
  • commit to the secrets repository

Users, organizations and repositories

Shared user: forgejo-cascading-pr

The forgejo-cascading-pr user opens pull requests on behalf of other repositories by way of the cascading-pr action. It is a regular user, not part of any team. It is only used for that purpose for security reasons.

Dedicated user: forgejo-backport-action

The forgejo-backport-action user opens backport pull requests on the forgejo repository. It is a member of the mergers team. The associated email is mailto:forgejo-backport-action@forgejo.org.

Shared user: release-team

The release-team user publishes and signs all releases. The associated email is mailto:release@forgejo.org.

The public GPG key used to sign the releases is EB114F5E6C0DC2BCDD183550A4B61A2DC5923710 Forgejo Releases <release@forgejo.org>

Shared user: forgejo-experimental-ci

The forgejo-experimental-ci user is dedicated to provide the application tokens used by the CI to build releases and publish them to https://codeberg.org/forgejo-experimental. It does not (and must not) have permission to publish releases at https://codeberg.org/forgejo.

Dedicated user: forgejo-renovate-action

The forgejo-renovate-action user opens renovate pull requests on the forgejo repository. It is a member of the mergers team. The associated email is mailto:forgejo-renovate-action@forgejo.org.

Integration and experimental organization

The https://codeberg.org/forgejo-integration organization is dedicated to integration testing. Its purpose is to ensure all artefacts can effectively be published and retrieved by the CI/CD pipelines.

The https://codeberg.org/forgejo-experimental organization is dedicated to publishing experimental Forgejo releases. They are copied from the https://codeberg.org/forgejo-integration organization.

The forgejo-experimental-ci user as well as all Forgejo contributors working on the CI/CD pipeline should be owners of both organizations.