Release Process

[Claudenw]

The current release process for the BigQuery connectors requires GitHub actions to complete. The process is:

1. Generate the release notes.

   • Create the draft change text, such as: bash scripts/release_detail.sh 2.9.0 > /tmp/bigQuery2.9.0.txt
   • Edit /tmp/bigQuery2.9.0.txt to clarify the changes.
   • Add the edited text into docs/src/site/markdown/RELEASE_NOTES.md
   • Create a PR to update the RELEASE_NOTES.md (see Update release notes for 2.10.0 )
   • ⌛ Wait for a review and an approval for the PR to be merged (preferring Squash and merge).

2. Execute the GitHub action Create release PR to create a PR with the version bumps.

   • In most cases use the release version (e.g. 2.9.0) for and the next minor snapshot version (e.g. 2.10.0-SNAPSHOT).
   • If creating a patch release create a branch (e.g. 2.9.x) and use the patch version (e.g. 2.9.1) and the next patch snapshot version (e.g. 2.9.2-SNAPSHOT)
   • Edit the description of the PR by pasting /tmp/bigQuery2.9.0.txt into the description.
   • ⌛ Wait for a review and an approval for the PR to be merged (preferring Rebase and merge). ⚠️ Do not squash, we need the two separate commits.
   • Delete the branch release-2.9.0 now. It isn't pointing to anything useful.

3. Execute the GitHub action Create release to generate a GitHub release

   • Use the hash associated with the commit "Release version 2.9.0" (not the branch release-2.9.0)
   • After running, a new tag v2.9.0 will exist at the commit specified above.
   • A new release v2.9.0 will exist at that tag with the 4 assets already created.
   • Copy the /tmp/bigQuery2.9.0.txt contents into the release description.
   • Check Set as latest release
   • Click Publish release.

[RyanSkraba]

If creating a patch release create a branch (e.g. 2.9.x) and use the patch version (e.g. 2.9.1) and the next patch snapshot version (e.g. 2.9.2-SNAPSHOT)

This could be problematic: for 2.10.1, we didn't create a branch-2.10.x since main was not yet released as 2.11.0. There's no reason to create a branch at this point since there's no breaking minor changes on main. We can just do the 2.10.1 version directly on main, then go back to 2.11.0-SNAPSHOT.

Creating the branch should only occur if we're supporting multiple major or minor versions, until that point we can work on main while obeying semantic versioning, right?