GitLab

This pages sums up technical information to perform the different tasks from the release process. Action items from the release template link here. In the following sections, the release will have the generic name: MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH. Each number shall be replaced by the current release number.

• Git commands
  • Create release branch
  • RC tag
  • Get a RC checkout
  • Release tag
  • Merge latest release into master
  • Prepare and upload source packages
• Update the RELEASE_NOTES.txt
• Spelling check
• Translation for Monteverdi & Mapla
• OTB website
  • SuperBuild archive
  • Promote staging packages
  • Update documentation
    • CookBook
    • Update version list in CookBook
    • Doxygen
    • Wordpress content update
• Standalone packages sanity check

Git commands

Create release branch

git checkout -b release-MAJOR.MINOR develop
git push origin release-MAJOR.MINOR

RC tag

git checkout release-X.Y
git tag -a MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH-rc1 -m "Release Candidate tag MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH-rc1"
git push --tags origin release-X.Y

Get a RC checkout

Send the command to get a RC checkout in the announcement email, so that more users try it.

git clone https://gitlab.orfeo-toolbox.org/orfeotoolbox/otb.git OTB
cd OTB
git checkout -q --detach MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH-rc1

Release tag

For OTB repository, tag the release branch:

git checkout release-X.Y
git tag -a MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH -m "Release tag MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH"
git push --tags

For other repositories (OTB-Documents, OTB-DevUtils, otb-build-env), tag master:

git checkout master
git tag -a MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH -m "Release tag MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH"
git push --tags

Merge latest release into master

On OTB repository:

git checkout master
git merge release-X.Y
git push

Prepare and upload source packages

For convenience, nightly generated source packages should be available here.

For more information, check the script OTB/CI/deploy.sh, and the command git archive.

You will have to copy and rename the release archives into 2 locations:

/var/www/archives/packages
/var/www/archives/packages/archives/OTB

For a release version 3.2.1, the naming convention should follow the pattern OTB-3.2.1.[zip/tar.gz/tar.xz].

If it is the 2nd release candidate: OTB-3.2.1-rc2.[zip/tar.gz/tar.xz].

The management of older versions is done during the release process, so that at each time there is at least one stable release (non RC) in the packages directory. Older versions remain archived in:

/var/www/archives/packages/archives

Update the RELEASE_NOTES.txt

As proposed here.

The release note is divided into five categories: Feature, Bug, Refactoring, CI, and Documentation.

Make sure all the MR related to this release are attributed to the corresponding milestone. Assigned a label (feature, bug, refactoring, CI or documentation) to each MR that do not already have one of these labels.

Generate the release notes category by category, using the gitlab API and the jq command line program (json processing). For example, to fetch all %7.0.0 MR labeled feature:

curl "https://gitlab.orfeo-toolbox.org/api/v4/projects/53/merge_requests?state=merged&milestone=7.0.0&per_page=100&labels=feature&page=1" | jq '.[] | "Merge Request !"+(.iid|tostring)+": " + .title+" by "+.author.name'

Some cleaning may be needed:

• Add some postprocessing to remove extra " " and \ from the output of the command
• It seems that the gitlab API limits the number of item (MR) by page to 100. For labels with more than 100 items, we need to call the command twice, once with the &page=1 option and once with &page=2.
• Some MRs are listed several times in the release note, when they have multiple labels (e.g. bug and feature). I don't think this is an issue.

Spelling check

This is a simple script to run, but it should be run from its directory.

cd OTB/Utilities/Maintenance
./fix_typos.sh

The tool (based on codespell) will identify potential spelling errors and suggest a replacement. The user accepts or refuses those changes (Y/n).

Translation for Monteverdi & Mapla

The translation is done using Qt tools. The strings to translate have a special definition in the source code. Qt tools such as lupdate or lrelease can parse and register them in a .ts file. This file is the source file for translation, it contains original strings and their translation. There is one .ts for each translation language. Currently, OTB only has a french translation file : i18n/fr_FR.ts. To parse again all the strings in source code and update the ts file, you should :

• Go to a build directory of OTB with Monteverdi and Mapla enabled.
• Enable the option OTB_I18N_MERGE_TS and build the target i18n

cmake -D OTB_I18N_MERGE_TS:BOOL=ON .
make i18n

It will update the ts file with the new strings detected. Take caution because when OTB_I18N_MERGE_TS is ON, the call to make clean will remove the TS file.

• Disable OTB_I18N_MERGE_TS for safety and faster build

cmake -D OTB_I18N_MERGE_TS:BOOL=OFF .

• Go to the corresponding OTB source directory
• Add a translation for strings that don't have any, using a text editor or linguist tool. Beware, the translation of the keymap is a bit tricky (html formatted bloc).

linguist i18n/fr_FR.ts

• Finally commit changes made to the TS file.

OTB website

The resources for OTB website are placed in separate folders :

• /var/www/doc : all resources for documentation
• /var/www/archives : storage for source code, binary packages, and other archives
• /var/www/wordpress-4.0 : website architecture

A lot of resources are accessed with symlinks. The advised command to define a symlink is :

ln -nsf  target_file  link_name

SuperBuild archive

The SuperBuild archive is an all-in-one archive with the sources of the different projects compiled by the SuperBuild. The versions of these projects may vary between 2 releases, so the release number should be visible on this archive. The MD5 sum of the archive is also supplied. Since it is a large archive, users may need to check the download was successful. The archives for the develop branch and the latest release branch are produced nightly and available on the website : 1

These files should be copied to the OTB website in :

/var/www/archives/packages

Old archives should be added to /var/www/archives/packages/archives/OTB/

For manual generation

Both archive and md5 sum can also be generated from a CMake target in OTB project :

make SuperBuild-archive

This command will try to download all sources in OTB_BINARY_DIR/Download, and produce the output files in OTB_BINARY_DIR. It will also report dead links.

If this archive is for a particular release, use the naming conventions :

SuperBuild-archives-MAJOR.MINOR.tar.bz2
SuperBuild-archives-MAJOR.MINOR.md5

If this archive is for develop, use the naming conventions :

SuperBuild-archives-develop.tar.bz2
SuperBuild-archives-develop.md5

Promote staging packages

On OTB server, copy standalone packages from /var/www/archives/packages/ci/staging to 2 locations :

• /var/www/archives/packages
• /var/www/archives/packages/archives/OTB

You shall copy the following binaries:

• OTB Windows 32bit
• OTB Windows 64bit
• OTB Linux 64bit
• OTB MacOSX 64bit

Then, cleanup in the packages folder if relevant:

• make sure older release and release candidate packages are in 'archives/OTB'
• keep latest release and clean older binaries

For final release, update the symlinks in /var/www/archives/qgis :

• OTB-Win64.zip -> /var/www/archives/packages/OTB-MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH-Win64.zip
• OTB-Linux64.run -> /var/www/archives/packages/OTB-MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH-Linux64.run
• OTB-Darwin64.run -> /var/www/archives/packages/OTB-MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH-Darwin64.run

Update documentation

Updating documentation contains multiple steps:

• Cookbook
• Doxygen

CookBook

The CookBook is generated for the latest commit on release branch. The PDF and tar.gz archive should be copied in: /var/www/archives/packages. The online html version shall be deployed in /var/www/doc/CookBook-MAJOR.MINOR.

tar -xzf /var/www/archives/packages/ci/staging/CookBook-MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH-html.tar.gz -C /var/www/doc

The symlinks in /var/www/wordpress-4.4 have to be updated :

cd /var/www/wordpress-4.4
ln -nsf /var/www/doc/CookBook-MAJOR.MINOR CookBook-MAJOR.MINOR
ln -nsf CookBook-MAJOR.MINOR CookBook

Update version list in CookBook

In the develop branch, update the file Documentation/Cookbook/_static/html/versions.html with the new version and link.

Doxygen

The doxygen is generated for the latest commit on release branch. The current doxygen should be copied to /var/www/doc:

cd /var/www/doc
tar -xjf /var/www/archives/packages/ci/staging/OTB-Doxygen-MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH.tar.bz2 -C .
mv html doxygen-MAJOR.MINOR

The symlinks in /var/www/wordpress-4.0 have to be updated:

cd /var/www/wordref-4.0
ln -nsf ../doc/doxygen-MAJOR.MINOR doxygen-MAJOR.MINOR
ln -nsf doxygen-MAJOR.MINOR doxygen

Wordpress content update

After a release, the “Download” page should be updated. This page can be edited from the wordpress admin interface (look for Pages -> Download).

The front page of the website should also be updated with the last released version and the date. From the wordpress admin interface, look for Pages -> “Open Source processing of remote sensing images - Front Page”.

Note : In a different version of wordpress, the front page buttons were edited through “Appearance” -> “Theme Options” -> “Header One Settings”.

Standalone packages sanity check

Manually check that the packages that are about to be released as the next OTB version are working. For a given platform, do the following:

• Identify the exact file about to be released
• Download that file
• Follow word-for-word the official installation procedure from the Cookbook
• Open Monteverdi
  • Activate Help/About... dialog and check version number
  • Open this .tif image.
  • Navigate in the image briefly: translate, zoom, use the quicklook window
  • Load OTB applications
  • Open the 'Image conversion' (otbgui_Convert) application and run it on the loaded image (pick random parameters)
  • Check french translation (i18n)

If there is any problem, crash or suspicious behavior when doing the above, open an issue.