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Once the branch is created, only changes necessary for the target release are merged in from the trunk.
... to the ICU project site.
Build the icuapps module following the README‘s. Update code and/or docs as needed. “Reference” platforms for icuapps are: RedHat Linux and win32. On Linux, icuapps is built against the "make install "‘ed ICU. So, run ICU4C’s configure with --prefix=/some/where pointing to where ICU4C should be installed, and also follow icuapps’s README.
Install the new locale explorer and other demos/samples onto the public demo hosting site.
Update the ICU collation demo's index.html
with the new ICU version’s available collators.
available-collators.txt
into index.html
.meld webdemo/collation/index.html ../available-collators.txt
For details see the comments at the start of the build.sh file.
⚠ Careful! The following examples contain specific version, revision and ticket numbers. Adjust them for the current release! Easiest: Paste into an editor, fix, then paste into the terminal.
Sanity check: Update to the latest repository revision. (Main branch if you copy from main, maintenance branch if you copy from there.)
git checkout main git pull upstream main git log -n1 commit bcd0... (HEAD -> main, upstream/main, ...)
Ensure that your local branch is in sync with the upstream branch. Make sure you are checking the upstream remote, and not your fork!
Build & test ICU4C & ICU4J on your machine.
Create the maintenance branch from the current known good main ref.
git checkout -b maint/maint-63 git push -u upstream maint/maint-63
Use the GitHub GUI to create both the “release” and the “tag” at the same time:
https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/releases/new
Fill in the tag name, such as “release-63-rc” or “release-63-1”, and make the target the “maint/maint-xx” branch (such as maint/maint-63).
Set the title to “ICU 63 RC” or “ICU 63.1”. Fill in the description using the text from the announcement email. (You can also look at previous releases and possibly re-use some of the generic text, such as links to the API docs, etc.)
Your screen should look like this:
For the release candidate tag, please check the box that says “Pre-Release”.
We no longer need to add the note about Git LFS files, as GitHub now includes them in the auto-generated .zip downloads.
Click the “Publish Release” button to make the tag.
Note: The “latest” tag is no longer updated. It was agreed by the ICU-TC to be deleted around the 64.2 time-frame, as it doesn't work well with with Git. (You need to force-push the new tag, and if somebody has already cloned the repository, they might have something different for the “latest” tag). A possible future alternative might be a sym-link folder, or HTTP redirect that points to the latest release.
Create the maintenance release tag from the maintenance branch, as above.
Update the “latest” tag.
Tag related svn files, for icu, icu4j and (for final releases) tools file trees. We tag the tools tree so that we can reproduce the Unicode tools that were used for the Unicode data files in this release.
For a Release Candidate, just tag, don't branch, and only tag icu & icu4j.
For the final release, branch then tag. Copy the trunk to maint/maint-4-8 and copy that to tags/release-4-8. Specify the source revision explicitly via -r so that you don't inadvertently pick up an unexpected changeset. Make sure that the trunk at the source revision is good.
We do not tag the data & icuapps trees. Steven Loomis writes on 2011-may-23:
My thought had been (in the CVS days) to take a ‘snapshot’ of these items. However, in SVN all you need is a date or a revision number (such as r30140).
So, probably, we don't need to tag these two (icuapps or data).
Tools are more important because those tools are actually used in the release.
Create the download page before the first milestone, if we have one, or before the release candidate.
Log into the ICU homepage Google Site. (If you don't have write access, ask one of the editors to grant you access.)
Verify that there is not already a page for the upcoming release: Either via the sitemap, or on the bottom of the main download page where it says something like “Subpages (27): View All”.
Copy the download page for the last release: Go to that page, gear menu, Copy page; “Name your page” using just the major version number for now (e.g., “61”) so that the page URL is just that number, select “Put page under Downloading ICU”, click the red COPY button.
Adjust the new page as needed: Change the title to “Download ICU 61 Release Candidate” (with the right version number...), remove contents specific to the previous release, update all version numbers, update all links.
Put a big, bold+italics, red warning at the top like “This version has not been released yet. Use it for testing but not in production!”
Save the page. It is generally a good idea to save frequently. For further edits, simply go back into edit mode. (Keyboard shortcut ‘e’ for edit, ctrl+s for save.)
Add new contents for the upcoming release: Grab some text from the sibling Unicode and CLDR release notes, look at the proposal status doc for this release, make a pass through the api/enhancement tickets fixed in this release or under reviewing/reviewfeedback.
Look at the download pages of the last two releases for templates for things like a Migration Issues section etc.
Ask everyone on the team to add stuff & details.
Once the page has been created and various people are invited to edit it, everyone should keep editing short so that the page is not locked for others for long periods of time.
For a maintenance release, look at the ICU 60 page which includes 60.2.
We had the following HTML on the main download page for ICU 4.8M1 = 4.7.1:
<h3 style="background-color:rgb(102, 102, 102);color:white;margin-bottom:0pt;margin-top:12pt;padding-left:0.75em;font-size:1em;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Development Milestones</h3> <table border="0"><p style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Development milestone versions of ICU can be downloaded below. A development milestone is a stable snapshot build for next ICU major version. These binaries and source code are provided for evaluation purpose and should be not be used in production environments. New APIs or features in a milestone release might be changed or removed without notice. </p> <tbody> <tr> <td style="width:105px;height:16px"> <b>Release</b></td> <td style="width:792px;height:16px"> <b>Major Changes<br> </b></td> </tr> <tr> <td style="width:105px;height:29px"> <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/icusite/download/471">4.8M1 (4.7.1)</a><br> </td> <td style="width:792px;height:29px"> CLDR 1.9.1+, Parent locale override, Dictionary type trie, Alphabetic index (C), Compound text encoding (C), JDK7 Locale conversion (J)<br> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </span><br>
Download Directories are located at, for example, icu-project.org:/home/htdocs/ex/files/icu4c/4.4.2
corresponding to http://download.icu-project.org/ex/files/icu4c/4.4.2/ Look at previous releases for an example.
Follow instructions here: Building ICU4J Release Files
WORK IN PROGRESS
Important: this step works with Unix make + docker.
First, install docker and docker-compose. Do not proceed until docker run hello-world works!
$ git clone https://github.com/unicode-org/icu-docker.git $ cd icu-docker/src $ git clone --branch release-64-rc --depth 1 https://github.com/unicode-org/icu.git $ cd icu $ git lfs fetch $ git lfs checkout $ cd ../.. $ less [README.md](https://github.com/unicode-org/icu-docker/blob/main/README.md) # Follow these instructions.
Note: If you only want to make a source tarball (.tgz/.zip), then you can run `make dist`.
cd C:\icu\icu4c\ (or wherever you have ICU located). powershell Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope Process Unrestricted .\packaging\distrelease.ps1 -arch x64This will produce the file “source\dist\icu-windows.zip”, which will need to be renamed before uploading.
maint/maint-<version>
branch.This step publishes pre-processed Unicode property data, which may be ingested by downstream clients such as ICU4X.
C: Create Artifacts from icuexportdata
and download its single artifact (icuexportdata_output
)icuexportdata_tag-goes-here.zip
file to the correct tag (replacing slashes with dashes)Sign all archives created above with your own personal PGP key. This creates a file with .asc as the suffix.
$ gpg --armor --detach-sign icu4c-xxx-xxx.zip # To verify $ gpg --verify icu4c-xxx-xxx.zip.asc
Use md5sum or cfv to create md5 hash sums for three groups of files:
Using md5sum to create and verify the checksum files:
Alternatively, use cfv to create and verify md5 files:
cfv -t md5 -C -f icu-……-src.md5 somefile.zip somefile.tgz … # To verify cfv -f icu-……-src.md5
Create an additional hash sum file SHASUM512.txt file with:
shasum -a 512 *.zip *.tgz | tee SHASUM512.txt
This file should also be GPG signed. Check the .asc with `gpg verify`.
Update the gadgets on the download page to point at the new URL for the binaries.
Make sure that, aside from download pages, homepages, news items, feature lists and feature comparisons, etc. are updated. Upload the new API references. Update the User Guide.
Update the ICU release number list by going to “Admin>Versions” in Trac, and add the new ICU version.
Update online demos/tools to the latest version:
Collation and comparison charts need to be updated. See charts/Performance & Size.
Unset the “sensitive” flag on old tickets. For example, on tickets that were fixed two or more releases ago.
Sample ticket query for ICU 65, for tickets fixed in 63 or earlier. Adjust the fixVersion selection as appropriate. Check the list in the ICU meeting.
Check duplicates and fixedbyotherticket! Keep the “sensitive” flag on tickets that were closed as duplicates of other tickets that are not yet fixed or have been fixed only very recently.
For removing the flag:
Double-check that tickets with commits in this release are closed/fixed. Close as needed. (Hopefully none misticketed at this point...)
Then punt remaining tickets marked for this release:
After punting, please also update the “To-Do for Next ICU Release” widget on Jira.
Update ICU4C readme.html and ICU4J readme.html before every milestone (GA / RC / Milestone-N). Make sure the following items are up to date.