Release Procedure

This is a checklist for how to perform a release of TinyGo.

CI builds and publishes the release. The Release workflow (.github/workflows/release.yml) collects the artifacts that the Linux, macOS and Windows workflows already built for the tagged commit, and creates a draft release. It builds nothing, so what ships is what was tested. See the "Publish a release" section of BUILDING.md.

• Make the release

  • Update CHANGELOG.md on the dev branch
  • Set const version in goenv/version.go to the new version, without a v prefix
  • Merge dev branch to release branch
  • Tag the commit on the release branch and push the tag, for example git tag v0.42.0 && git push origin v0.42.0. The tag must be v plus the version in goenv/version.go, because the release file names come from that constant.
  • Wait for the Release workflow. It waits for the three build workflows, collects the nine release files, and creates a draft release with the CHANGELOG.md entry as its notes.
  • Review the draft release and publish it

  To release again after a failure, delete the draft release and start the Release workflow from the Actions tab with the tag as its input.

• Update the ecosystem

  • Update Homebrew recipe https://github.com/tinygo-org/homebrew-tools
  • Update Docker container for release build https://github.com/tinygo-org/docker
  • Update documentation to match the latest release following the changelog
  • Update TinyGo Playground https://github.com/tinygo-org/playground
  • Update Fedora package repo https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/tinygo update or message @QuLogic
  • Update Nix package
  • Update installation links in the documentation
  • Update Arch package update or message @johanbrandhorst for https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/tinygo-bin/
  • Close all open issues tagged with the label next-release and remove the label from each of them when closing.

• Update ecosystem packages

  • Update drivers
  • Update bluetooth
  • Update tinyfs
  • Update tinyterm
  • Update tinydraw
  • Update tinyfont

• After the release

  • On the dev branch, set goenv/version.go to the next -dev version