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Contributing to patch releases

The process of creating a patch release is roughly as follows:

  1. Create a new branch (e.g. backports-release-1.10) against the relevant minor release branch (e.g. release-1.10). Usually a corresponding pull request is created as well.

  2. Add commits, nominally from master (hence "backports"), to that branch. See below for more information on this process.

  3. Run the BaseBenchmarks.jl benchmark suite and PkgEval.jl package ecosystem exerciser against that branch. Nominally BaseBenchmarks.jl and PkgEval.jl are invoked via Nanosoldier.jl from the pull request associated with the backports branch. Fix any issues.

  4. Once all test and benchmark reports look good, merge the backports branch into the corresponding release branch (e.g. merge backports-release-1.10 into release-1.10).

  5. Open a pull request that bumps the version of the relevant minor release to the next patch version, e.g. as in this pull request.

  6. Ping @JuliaLang/releases to tag the patch release and update the website.

  7. Open a pull request that bumps the version of the relevant minor release to the next prerelease patch version, e.g. as in this pull request.

Step 2 above, i.e. backporting commits to the backports-release-X.Y branch, has largely been automated via Backporter: Backporter searches for merged pull requests with the relevant backport-X.Y tag, and attempts to cherry-pick the commits from those pull requests onto the backports-release-X.Y branch. Some commits apply successfully without intervention, others not so much. The latter commits require "manual" backporting, with which help is generally much appreciated. Backporter generates a report identifying those commits it managed to backport automatically and those that require manual backporting; this report is usually copied into the first post of the pull request associated with backports-release-X.Y and maintained as additional commits are automatically and/or manually backported.

When contributing a manual backport, if you have the necessary permissions, please push the backport directly to the backports-release-X.Y branch. If you lack the relevant permissions, please open a pull request against the backports-release-X.Y branch with the manual backport. Once the manual backport is live on the backports-release-X.Y branch, please remove the backport-X.Y tag from the originating pull request for the commits.