Improve the release process for Knative projects

[chizhg]

Currently, Knative test-infra provides infrastructure for Knative projects to do auto-release, dot-release and nightly-release, see the difference between them in https://github.com/knative/test-infra/blob/master/guides/release_setup.md.

To support these releases, the Knative project needs to vendor test-infra scripts, source release.sh in ./hack/release.sh, and overwrite the callback functions to generate the release for this project. And they also need to add corresponding Prow jobs. Based on the schedules, the Prow jobs will run ./hack/release.sh to generate the artifacts and publish them to GCS and GCR.

So far, we have met multiple issues for using the script and process:

1. Since all the logics are written in bash scripts, it has the same issue as the testing process, as described in Rewrite test script to Golang #1587
2. We need to vendor the scripts in each repo, and make sure it's up-to-date in every repo, which is another issue for this "vendor and reference" model.
3. The release process is not part of the presubmit tests, which means if there is an issue, it can only be discovered on the release day.
4. If there are errors in auto-release and dot-release jobs (specially in the process of adding tag on Github and uploading artifacts), rerunning them will always get an error because the changes made by the last job were not cleaned up properly.

We need a better story for release in Knative that can fix all the above issues.

/kind enhancement

[chizhg]

Related:
#1262
#1778
#214

[nachocano]

BTW, would it be possible to publish knative-gcp nightly artifacts to the google org bucket instead of knative? Otherwise the pre-release knative.dev links don't work...

https://storage.googleapis.com/google-nightly/knative-gcp/latest/cloud-run-events.yaml

but it actually is here:

https://storage.googleapis.com/knative-nightly/knative-gcp/latest/cloud-run-events.yaml

[chizhg]

The bucket has always been knative-nightly, and I'm not sure how the decision was made.
Could you direct me to the pre-release knative.dev link? I didn't know there was a google-nightly bucket.

[nachocano]

no, there's not... see knative/docs#2220 we might have to change the artifacts.html then, see Matt's comment

…

On Tue, Mar 3, 2020 at 9:42 PM Chi Zhang ***@***.***> wrote: The bucket has always been knative-nightly, and I'm not sure how the decision was made. Could you point me to the pre-release knative.dev link? I didn't know there was a google-nightly bucket. — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1782?email_source=notifications&email_token=ABD65DFBGJPJJEH5NK5XK2TRFXS3VA5CNFSM4LA3JEH2YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOENWOC7Y#issuecomment-594338175>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABD65DC7ZJEU4COUZA44NXLRFXS3VANCNFSM4LA3JEHQ> .

[chizhg]

no, there's not... see knative/docs#2220 we might have to change the artifacts.html then, see Matt's comment
…
On Tue, Mar 3, 2020 at 9:42 PM Chi Zhang @.***> wrote: The bucket has always been knative-nightly, and I'm not sure how the decision was made. Could you point me to the pre-release knative.dev link? I didn't know there was a google-nightly bucket. — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1782?email_source=notifications&email_token=ABD65DFBGJPJJEH5NK5XK2TRFXS3VA5CNFSM4LA3JEH2YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOENWOC7Y#issuecomment-594338175>, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABD65DC7ZJEU4COUZA44NXLRFXS3VANCNFSM4LA3JEHQ .

I think it makes sense to hardcode the org as knative.

[knative-housekeeping-robot]

Issues go stale after 90 days of inactivity.
Mark the issue as fresh by adding the comment /remove-lifecycle stale.
Stale issues rot after an additional 30 days of inactivity and eventually close.
If this issue is safe to close now please do so by adding the comment /close.

Send feedback to Knative Productivity Slack channel or file an issue in knative/test-infra.

/lifecycle stale

[chizhg]

/remove-lifecycle stale

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open for 90 days with no
activity. It will automatically close after 30 more days of
inactivity. Reopen the issue with /reopen.Mark the issue as
fresh by adding the comment /remove-lifecycle stale.

[chizhg]

/lifecycle frozen

[n3wscott]

We should start looking at RC builds of releases.

[krsna-m]

Closing in favor of knative/infra#99