Create Alpha release

[xsebek]

This issue shall serve as the final checklist of tasks for the Alpha release.

Final issues

These are the last issues left to do in our plan for Alpha:

• Curate challenge scenarios #635
• VSCode higlighting is broken in v0.0.5 #609
• Add version and author fields to scenario format #611

Final tasks

There are also a few small tasks we should do before releasing:

• Update README 📝
  • More prominent links to IRC, wiki, COMMUNITY, + CONTRIBUTING near the top
  • Recommend cabal install swarm in README
    Update README with more explicit instructions about installation #722
  • Add an IRC badge/shield thing
• Update CHANGELOG 📝 Release version 0.1.0.0 #727
• Update https://github.com/swarm-game/swarm/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions,-Tips-and-Tricks ?
• Make sure cheat sheets on wiki are up-to-date
• Update Speedrun page on wiki
• Bump Swarm version in Cabal 📦 Release version 0.1.0.0 #727
  • the "pre-alpha" is named 0.0.0.1 so that current binaries can check and compare if a new release is available
• Clean up tags 🏷️
  • namely Low hanging fruit so its easier for others to join
• Do a playthrough or two to catch any glaring problems
• Automate release #673
  • it would be nice if everything was built automatically and pushed to Hackage and GitHub release
  • presumably, other projects have GitHub Actions that we could use for inspiration 🙂
• Add a bash snippet to release description explaining how to download the data dir. See Fallback to XDG data directory #678 (comment)
  Update README with more explicit instructions about installation #722
• Update issue templates and issue template chooser (links to other places to ask questions / give feedback?)
  • https://docs.github.com/en/communities/using-templates-to-encourage-useful-issues-and-pull-requests/configuring-issue-templates-for-your-repository

Bugfixes

There were a few bugs that were found in the first release:

• version comparison was not applied in released binaries (Fix version check when there is no GitInfo #729)
• the scenario Swarm scripts were not searched for in the data directory (Run data files #730)

Let's quickly fix those and release a small bugfix release before publicizing Swarm:

• Update CHANGELOG
• Bump Cabal version
• rename data.zip to something more descriptive
• Push 0.1.0.1 tag (will automatically make a new release on GitHub and Hackage)

Editor release

We should also publish a new version of the VSCode plugin with new keywords:

• Update VSCode CHANGELOG
• Push swarm-language-vscode-0.0.7 tag

Announcing

• Add GitHub and Hackage release badges to README
  Add release badges #725
• Write announcement blog post 📝
• Post announcement blog post
  https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2022/10/06/swarm-alpha-release/
• Announce to r/haskell
  https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/xxeru1/swarm_alpha_release/

[byorgey]

How hard do you think it would be to create some binary builds for a few common architectures? Is there an easy way to do that with GitHub Actions? cabal install from Hackage is better than cloning the git repo and building from source, but it's still a big barrier for people who don't already have a Haskell toolchain installed.

[xsebek]

@byorgey I guess we will have to try and see. 🙂

I linked one blog post in #673, which has a GitHub Action that should do this automatically. 🤞
I can try it manually and check if those binaries will work in a clean docker container.
If not, then I will have to read more blog posts or ask around. 😄

[xsebek]

🚀 🎉