=head1 NAME

release_managers_guide - Releasing a new version of perl 5.x

=head1 SYNOPSIS

The release process is primarily executed by the current pumpking.

This document both helps as a check-list for the pumpking and is
a base for ideas on how the various tasks could be automated or 
distributed.

The process has two major parts. In the first part 
the pumpking needs to determine if the current head revision in Git
is ready for shipment. The second part is the actual release 
and packaging process.

=head1 DETAILS

=head2 Is it ready?

In this step we need to make sure that:

=over 4

=item 1

perl passes its own test suite and 

=item 2

CPAN works


which comes down to:

    for each module that fails its regression tests on $current
      did it fail identically on $previous?
      if yes, "SEP" (Somebody Else's Problem)
      else work out why it failed (a bisect is useful for this)

    attempt to group failure causes

    for each failure cause
      is that a regression?
      if yes, figure out how to fix it
        (more code? revert the code that broke it)
      else
        (presumably) it's relying on something un-or-under-documented
        should the existing behaviour stay?
          yes - goto "regression"
          no - note it in perldelta as a significant bugfix
          (also, try to inform the module's author)

( TBD based on http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2009/05/msg146680.html )

=back


=head2 The Actual release process

The set of tasks that can be "scripted" for Perl 5

=over 4

=item 0

so you think you have a source control in a state that won't break CPAN,
at least not in "surprising" ways.

=item 1

As there are no regular smokes (yet - please fix?) find out about the state
of VMS. If it's bad, think again.

=item 2

Re-read the perldelta to try to find any embarrassing typos

=item 3

Run Porting/makemeta

=item 4

[used to be run autodoc.pl, but I eliminated that]

=item 5

[used to be run pod/buildtoc, but I eliminated that]

=item 6

update module corelist, but we need to fix that

[it has been holding perforce revisions for releases, but we can't know
hashes in advance for git. We need to agree a plan to move to git tags]

=item 7

[update changes, but Dave has eliminated that]

=item 8

update patchlevel.h to remove all local patches

=item 9

make tarball with Porting/makerel

=item 10

copy tarball to some other machine x 2 [or more - IRC is good for this]

=item 11

check that ./Configure -des && make all test works in one place

=item 12

check that ./Configure ... && make all test_harness install works


=item 13

bootstrap the CPAN client on the clean install

=item 14

install CPANPLUS

=item 15

bootstrap the CPANPLUS client

=item 16

install an XS module

=item 17

if this is good, commit this.
sit, and wait.

=item 18

do the smoke tests pass (particularly Win32)

=item 19

if yes, upload it to PAUSE. This is the point of no return

=item 20

mail p5p to announce it, with a quote I prepared earlier

=item 21

wait 24 hours or so

=item 22

post the announcement to use.perl.org

=back

=head1 SOURCE

Based on http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2009-05/msg00608.html

=cut