meta: update release guide with notes for major releases

[jasnell]

Intended as an initial quick draft.

Checklist

• make -j4 test (UNIX), or vcbuild test (Windows) passes
• tests and/or benchmarks are included
• documentation is changed or added
• commit message follows commit guidelines

[jasnell]

/cc @BethGriggs @nodejs/release

[BethGriggs]

LGTM. I was talking offline with @richardlau and he mentioned other steps for major releases such as creating symlinks for dist/latest-v12.x etc. - should that information be captured here too?

[jasnell]

The releaser typically doesn't do those additional steps but it's likely worth adding

…

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 09:53 Bethany Nicolle Griggs ***@***.*** wrote: ***@***.**** commented on this pull request. LGTM. I was talking offline with @richardlau <https://github.com/richardlau> and he mentioned other steps for major releases such as creating symlinks for dist/latest-v12.x etc. - should that information be captured here too? — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#25497 (review)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAa2edSl1wT1A0CYoyzQnK7ICC7_zuTmks5vDhW0gaJpZM4Z_Aq5> .

[codebytere]

LGTM 👍

[jasnell]

Ping @nodejs/release

[cjihrig]

I believe @BethGriggs and @codebytere both LGTM'ed this, and can review on behalf of the release team.

[jasnell]

Ah, right lol... I was scanning for green checkmarks not inline LGTMs :-)

[vsemozhetbyt]

Should the TOC be updated?

[vsemozhetbyt]

Doc format LGTM, with some nits.

[targos]

Can you add a link to the table of contents?

[BethGriggs]

(Carrying over some of the conversations from #26844)

@jasnell, rather than cherry-picking around the majors that land on master after the major cut off, would it be possible to gate the major PRs landing in master for those 3-4 weeks? The current guidance around semver majors requiring no objections from TSC + 2 reviews could apply.

No commits should then be out of order - which has happened recently when we have gotten a retrospective request/agreement for a specific major from master to land on vN.x. The final vN.x release would pretty much just be a direct cut of master on the date of the final release candidate, and the commit history of the new release would be parallel with master for the first release.

(I understand that implementing a "semver major freeze on master" process would first require socialisation of the idea and agreement from the various working groups.)

[jasnell]

The current model was chosen to avoid adding any delay to master branch development. It intentionally puts more burden on the releaser so that there's no need to hold up activity in master. I'd prefer to keep it true to that goal

[richardlau]

Add a post release task to update the altdocs versions? e.g. #27658.

Edit: This will not be required if #27661 lands.

[richardlau]

LGTM. I was talking offline with @richardlau and he mentioned other steps for major releases such as creating symlinks for dist/latest-v12.x etc. - should that information be captured here too?

For the dist symlinks, e.g. nodejs/nodejs-latest-linker#2, that only currently needs to be done for the first transition to LTS release.

For the first transition to LTS release there's also a test, parallel/test-process-release.js, that needs updating.

[Trott]

Left a bunch of suggestions, but I'm A-OK with this without some or all of them. I do think they are all improvements, but mostly only marginal improvements.

[richardlau]

@nodejs/releasers Does it make sense to land this as-is and then update as necessary?

[BethGriggs]

Rebase, new CI-Lite: https://ci.nodejs.org/job/node-test-pull-request-lite-pipeline/3891/

[BethGriggs]

Landed in 7b350bb