Node.js v4.0.0 Release Checklist for nodejs.org

[rvagg]

See nodejs/node#2522 for ongoing details; the current plan is for it to be released in a bit over 24 hours from now so I want to make sure that (a) we have people available who can fix up the website if needed and (b) we capture all of the items that we know need doing on the website end.

The obvious differences between v4.x and v0.12.x for the website that I can think of are:

• New download file types and adjusted old ones—armv6, armv7, arm64, no "universal" .pkg for OSX, no 32-bit OSX, .xz versions of all of the tarballs.
• New style CHANGELOG meaning we can do more than just list commits.

What do we need to get done?

• New download page, it looks like @phillipj has this ready to go here: Added SunOS and ARM binaries to download matrix #87
• Release blog post, we're not auto-generating these from core any more, it'll have to be done manually for now I suppose. Current release proposal with WIP changelog entry: Release proposal: v4.0.0 node#2715, also should have some additional blog-post style text to go along with it with a quick summary of what v4 is all about and pointing to any resources we have for people to read. I can work on the text here and PR to this repo for feedback.

Is there anything else I'm not seeing? I'm assuming that nodejs.org/dist/index.json will be automatically picked up and the downloads pages generated for them, is that correct?

[fhemberger]

• Run scripts/load-versions.js after release once to get the full versions list (needed to determine current version and full release history).
• Remove the comment here: https://github.com/nodejs/new.nodejs.org/blob/master/layouts/download-releases.hbs#L13 (and remove the class from h2, we're not using this style any longer).

I'd love to get #98 and #100 merged before the release as well.

[sambthompson]

• Repoint Changelog on front page from https://github.com/nodejs/node-v0.x-archive/blob/master/ChangeLog to https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md, reversing fix in New site is live with 0.12.7 everywhere, except link to changelog #84

[fhemberger]

I've created a separate node-4.0-release branch (I checked off the tasks which have already been done). Please commit required changes there, so we just need to merge it once the release is finished.

[phillipj]

The release-post.js script found in #88 could be worth testing, atleast for filling in the changelog, files and shasums. It'll create locale/en/blog/release/v4.0.0.md locally and can be edited by hand from there..

It fetches data from three different sources, which all have to be updated / merged into node's repo master before running the script:

• https://nodejs.org/dist/index.json
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nodejs/node/master/CHANGELOG.md
• https://nodejs.org/dist/v4.0.0/SHASUMS256.txt.asc

[fhemberger]

@phillipj 👍 Let's do this.

[rvagg]

So I can edit the resulting file and add some custom text about the release after it's been created? And release-post.js is run by hand to do the generating, not on the server at deploy time?

[phillipj]

So I can edit the resulting file and add some custom text about the release after it's been created?

Yes, followed by you commiting it to the repo.

It's all manual by hand atm. We could ofc discuss something fancier / automatic later.

[rvagg]

• Update the ES6 documentation @ https://nodejs.org/en/docs/es6/, note the talk of arrow functions is no longer correct for v4. We need a volunteer to update this.

[rvagg]

all done I think

[fhemberger]

@rvagg https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md still shows v3.3.0 as latest version.

[rvagg]

fixed now with a merge of nodejs/node#2742, I probably could have got away with not waiting for review but pehaps we ought to use tagged links to CHANGELOG.md in future, e.g. https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/v4.0.0/CHANGELOG.md

[fhemberger]

Yes, we have already switched the link on the home page to the tagged one.