Creating an Official Release

Prerequisites

• Installed tools:
  • an up-to-date JDK 21
  • gpg is installed, a signing key has been created and the ~/.m2/settings.xml contains the User Token for the Maven Central Publishing Portal https://central.sonatype.com/publishing. See https://central.sonatype.org/publish/publish-portal-maven/ for details. The

Steps before the release

• Prepare the release notes in the readme.html
• Prepare the SQL scripts in the flowable/flowable-sql project and copy them to the distro/sql folder

Performing the Release

Use the following steps to create an official release:

• Depending on what kind of machine you are using to perform the release. You might need to run export GPG_TTY=$(tty) source. This is needed for the setup with macOS Sequoia 15.6
• Checkout main branch
• Update version in all pom.xml files from snapshot to the release version and commit with message "Move to version x"
• Execute a local build to quickly validate everything compiles and dependencies are good: ./mvnw -T 1C clean verify -DskipTests -Pdeploy -Dgpg.skip=true
• Run ./mvnw clean deploy -Pdeploy -DskipTests
  • Depending on your GPG installation, you'll be somehow prompted for your GPG-Passphrase.
• Once the build is finished, check the pending deployments on https://central.sonatype.com/publishing/deployments and perhaps the artifacts created in ./distro/target/flowable-*.
  • If you see any problems, drop the deployment in Maven Central
• Everything is fine?
  • Publish the deployment from Maven Central
  • Create a tag (e.q. git tag -a flowable-7.2.0 -m "Version 7.2.0")
  • Update version in all pom.xml files from release version to next SNAPSHOT version and commit
  • Push the commits
• Depending whether this was a new latest version release or an older patch do one of the following:
  • Latest: Run the Release Docker Images With Latest Workflow using the tag from the version
  • Older Patch release: Run the Release Docker Images Workflow using the tag from the version
• Create a release on GitHub using the release notes and link it to the created tag
• Write an announcement on the Open Source Forum
• Post on social media
• Celebrate! 🎉

And if something is wrong or missing or obsolete in this list, edit this page :).