| [wtp-releng] A quick run-through of the new release process |
Folks,
First, the good news- the WTP 3.4.1 and 3.5.0 builds are working. I am still cleaning things up, and they must still be launched by hand, but both of them are working. Now, for how to get stuff into those builds:
This information still isn't quite right, but it seems to work (somewhat), and I learned a lot last night, so I wanted to pass that along. Here's what I did last night to release changes for two Java EE plugins and a feature:
First, the code was committed locally and then pushed to git.eclipse.org (the two plugin changes were pushed by another committer, I did the feature change).
Then I figured out what plugins and features were updated - you need to manually store this information.
I tagged the repository in question - in this case, webtools.javaee.git. I had to do this by selecting a project in the Java perspective, brought up the context menu, and then selected Team->Advanced->Tag... and entered the appropriate Tag value and a comment. Note that you tag the entire repository, and not just the plugins and features that changed. I saved the tag value that I entered (in Notepad) for later use.
I pushed that tag to git.eclipse.org. This took me hours to figure out how to do:
Go to the Git Repository Exploring view
Select the repository, bring up the context menu, and select Push... (not Push to Upstream, but Push...)
Hit Next>
Press the Add All Tags Spec button. You should see the tag(s) you added since the last push show up with a new tag entry.
Press Finish
Then I made sure that I was in the right branch for the map files.
(For WTP 3.4.1, the first time, I had to go to the Git Repository Exploring view, and do Switch to-> New Branch... and specify refs/head/R3_4_maintenance for the Source ref, and just type in R3_4_maintenance for the Branch name, and I specified rebase.)
Then I updated the tag value (using the value I saved above) for the plugin(s) and feature(s) that were altered.
Then I committed and pushed the map files.
By doing this process to tag the plugins and feature, and to update the map files in both master and R3_4_maintenance, I was able to put the same change into both the WTP 3.4.1 and 3.5.0 builds. (But to test that the correct map files were pulled for each build, I only changed master, then built both, and verified that the change was not in the 3.4.1 build, and then I made the change in R3_4_maintenance, and now the same change is being pulled into the 3.4.1 build.)
Now, the one thing that befuddles me- I added a file to master in the webtools.maps.git repository... releng/kepler/dependencies.properties. When I switched the branch to R3_4_maintenance and did the push of the updated maps for 3.4.1, that file was also added to R3_4_maintenance. I am not sure why. So I caution you to use care when you use the same local Git repository for both master and R3_4_maintenance- it may be best practice to have separate local repositories. But I am still investigating what happened, and why.
Another little useful EGit tidbit- by pressing Ctrl+space in a comment, you can usually see your past comments. (I much prefer the dropdown that CVS used, but this made life a little easier.)
As I verify this information, I will formally write it up. But for now, I wanted to send a quick note so that people could release things to the WTP 3.4.1 and 3.5.0 builds for this week's declare.
FWIW,
- Carl Anderson
WTP programmer