Release Philosophy

Release Philosophy#

This section discusses topics related to Turbo Turtle releases and version numbering.

Version Numbers#

The Turbo Turtle project follows the PEP-440 standard for version numbering, as implemented by setuptools_scm. The production release version number uses the three component (“major.minor.micro”) scheme. The production version numbers correspond to Git tags in the project repository which point to a static release of the Turbo Turtle project.

The developer (a.k.a. dev or aea-beta) version number follows the production release number with an anticipated micro version bump (“major.minor.micro+1”) and the appended “.dev” local version number. Because the developer version is constantly updated against development work, the version number found in the deployed release contains additional information. During deployment, the developer version number is appended with the Git information from the most recent build as described by the default versioning scheme for setuptools_scm.

Major Number#

The major number is expected to increment infrequently. Incrementing the major number requires a version change announcement from the Turbo Turtle development team. This project will follow semantic versioning after the version 1.0.0 release.

Minor Number#

The minor number is updated for the following reasons:

  • New modules or major features

  • Features spanning multiple module dependencies

  • UX modifications

Minor version number increments should be made after a decision from the Turbo Turtle development team.

Micro Number#

The micro version number indicates the following changes:

  • Bug fixes

  • Existing feature enhancements

  • UI modifications

Micro releases are made at the discretion of the turbo-turtle lead developer and the development team.

Release Branch Requirements#

All version requires a manual update to the release number on a dedicated release commit. Versions are built from Git tags for the otherwise automated setuptools_scm version number tool. Tags may be added directly to a commit on the main branch, but a release branch is encouraged.

Steps needed for a release include:

  1. Create a release branch, e.g. release-0-4-1.

  2. Modify docs/changelog.rst to move version number for release MR commit and add description as relevant.

  3. Update CITATION.* files for Zenodo DOI and version numbers.

  4. Commit changes and submit a merge request to the main branch at the upstream repository.

  5. Solicit feedback and make any required changes.

  6. Immediately prior to merge, add the new version tag to the most recent commit.

    $ git tag 0.4.1
$ git push origin release-0-4-1 --tags

  1. Merge the release branch to main

  2. Create a new release for the new tag: https://re-git.lanl.gov/aea/python-projects/turbo-turtle/-/releases