Releasing appleseed

This page will guide you through the process of releasing a new version of appleseed.

The entire process usually takes between two and three hours.

Preparation

• Make sure all local changes are committed and pushed to GitHub.
• Make sure the version variables in the top level CMakeLists.txt are properly set.
• Make sure SSE instruction sets are enabled.

Tagging

In the Git repository, tag the last revision that is part of the release and push the tag to GitHub. Make sure to follow the naming convention used for the previous tags.

Building

On each supported platform:

1. Pull the latest changes from GitHub (make sure the tags are fetched).
2. Do git describe --long and check the version string.
3. On OS X / Linux, edit build/CMakeCache.txt, look for CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE and make sure it is set to Ship.
4. Build from scratch:
   • On OS X / Linux, in build/: cmake .. ; make clean ; make
   • On Windows, build the whole solution in all configurations (Batch Build in Visual Studio).
5. Make sure there is no compilation warning. If there are any, fix them and resume at step 1.

Packaging

1. Make sure appleseed.package's configuration (scripts/appleseed.package.configuration.xml) is up-to-date.
2. Run scripts/appleseed.package.py to build the package.

Testing

1. Unzip the package file somewhere.
2. Run appleseed.cli with the -v command line option and check the version information that get printed.
3. Start appleseed.studio and:
   1. Check the version information in the About window.
   2. Make sure all unit tests pass.
   3. Render the built-in Cornell Box project.
   4. Check that there is no warning or error messages in the Log panel.

Publishing

1. Create a new release on GitHub: https://github.com/appleseedhq/appleseed/releases/new
   To obtain the list of authors for from a particular commit to HEAD:

   git log --format='%aN' <commit hash>..@ | sort -u >authors.txt
   

2. Upload the binaries to the GitHub release.

3. Update the download page on appleseedhq.net.

4. Update the download links on the front page of appleseedhq.net.

Announcing

1. Announce the release in a new post on appleseedhq.net.
2. Post a note on Twitter.
3. Announce milestone releases on the appleseed-dev mailing list.