chore: new release process ( beta and full ) #3647

darshankabariya · 2025-11-20T10:27:54Z

@Ivansete-status @NagyZoltanPeter as discussed in the last PM, I’ve updated the release process to separate beta and full releases.

Created two separate templates for full and beta releases (.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_full_release.md and .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_beta_release.md).
Added a detailed process so we can properly follow both release types.

@fryorcraken

Ivansete-status

Thanks for the PR! 🙌
Some comments so far
I would suggest to add the Vac-QA test (asking Florin, Aya, etc.) within the beta release, which is very fast and gives a very valuable feedback 🚀

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_beta_release.md

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_full_release.md

docs/contributors/release-process.md

fcecin · 2025-11-21T10:43:52Z

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_beta_release.md

+
+All items below are to be completed by the owner of the given release.
+
+- [ ] Create release branch ( e.g. release/v0.X.0 )


Do we want to -beta all the tag and file names? Like release/v0.X.0-beta. (Asking. Not sure if that's even a good idea).

I think it’s a very good idea — it gives clear uniqueness to the branch, tag, and release names. @fcecin wdyt @Ivansete-status ??

Yes, this is a great idea @fcecin @darshankabariya ! 🙌

Actually, it’s fine even without using -beta. If we change the branch name to release/v0.X.0-beta, the release candidate names become unnecessarily long and a bit odd (e.g., v0.X.0-beta-rc.0, v0.X.0-beta-rc.1). But if you still prefer this approach, I’m happy to update it. so beta tag only at final tag after validation complete.

We can actually "upgrade" any beta release to a full release by performing the full round of QA on top of it later. Then it's just about copying the same files that were released with the beta process and removing beta from them. There's no need to distinguish a beta and a full release internally as the only difference is the full external QA process.

Gah, need to nerd out just a little bit more on this topic.

Usually, project releases don't get gated by heavy external QA. That is actually good and a privilege for nwaku to have the Status QA process available for its releases. QA is expensive and we have that covered for every release, which is luxurious.

We do however need a way to release without the full QA cycle. When projects do releases, it's already been through the standard level of validation that is both cheaper and still very thorough (e.g. CI with ~1,000 tests plus the brains of N people).

When projects do releases, there's an internal sense of whether the features in it are risqué or not, which motivates e.g. "beta" releases from the start. That's when you'd see branch names and tag names with "beta".

But nwaku doesn't release anything "beta" in that sense (if we did, that would have to be our "alpha"s instead, or "experimental", which is what we use after there's no more Greek letters to use). All our releases are meant to be stable. So it doesn't make much sense to use -beta in our tags and branches ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶f̶i̶l̶e̶s̶, because the "beta" attribution comes later -- it comes from making the release generally available while leaving the heavier QA step for later.

It wouldn't hurt necessarily to have -beta in all the tags ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶f̶i̶l̶e̶s̶ and branches and etc. but strictly speaking, the concept in the case of the nwaku release process just appears the moment the artifact is output.

fcecin · 2025-11-21T10:51:26Z

Thanks for the PR! 🙌 Some comments so far I would suggest to add the Vac-QA test (asking Florin, Aya, etc.) within the beta release, which is very fast and gives a very valuable feedback 🚀

Random idea: at some point we could even have alpha releases which could mean a fully-automated release from any commit in master that we want to have a release for (all the verification checkboxes would be fulfilled by a CI/CD script). So if we want something faster than beta (which still would have a bit of QA in it as Ivan suggests) we could do that as well later.

Ivansete-status · 2025-11-21T11:17:00Z

Good suggestion @fcecin (#3647 (comment))
Nevertheless, I think is not needed for now.
All the PRs should be merged with all Ci green.
Therefore, we can easily create an alpha release on demand, from the https://ci.infra.status.im/job/nim-waku/job/docker-manual/ job
( cc @darshankabariya )

fcecin

LGTM! Love our new beta releaase process!!

Ivansete-status

Adding some more comments. Thanks!

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_beta_release.md

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_full_release.md

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_beta_release.md

darshankabariya · 2025-11-25T12:40:47Z

Hi @Ivansete-status
I’ve addressed all your concerns regarding the release process. Could you please confirm this one ?
#3647 (comment)

Ivansete-status

Some more comments!
Thanks 🙌

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_beta_release.md

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_full_release.md

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_beta_release.md

Ivansete-status

Getting closer! Thanks for the patience :)
Some more nitpicks

Ivansete-status · 2025-12-01T12:48:35Z

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_beta_release.md

+
+- [ ] **Promote release to fleets**.
+  - [ ] Ask the PM lead to announce the release.
+  - [ ] Update infra config with any deprecated arguments or changed options.


Suggested change

- [ ] Update infra config with any deprecated arguments or changed options.

- [ ] Update infra config with any deprecated arguments or changed options.

- [ ] Update waku.sandbox with [this deployment job](https://ci.infra.status.im/job/nim-waku/job/deploy-waku-sandbox/).

Ivansete-status · 2025-12-01T12:49:24Z

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_beta_release.md

+
+All items below are to be completed by the owner of the given release.
+
+- [ ] Create release branch ( e.g. release/v0.X.0-beta ) if it doesn't exist.


Suggested change

- [ ] Create release branch ( e.g. release/v0.X.0-beta ) if it doesn't exist.

- [ ] Create release branch with major and minor only ( e.g. release/v0.X ) if it doesn't exist.

Ivansete-status · 2025-12-01T12:50:12Z

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_full_release.md

+
+All items below are to be completed by the owner of the given release.
+
+- [ ] Create release branch ( e.g. release/v0.X.0-beta ) if it doesn't exist.


Suggested change

- [ ] Create release branch ( e.g. release/v0.X.0-beta ) if it doesn't exist.

- [ ] Create release branch with major and minor only ( e.g. release/v0.X ) if it doesn't exist.

Ivansete-status · 2025-12-01T12:52:01Z

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_full_release.md

+
+- [ ] **Proceed with release**
+
+  - [ ] Assign a final release tag ( v0.X.0 ) to the same commit that contains the validated release-candidate tag (e.g. v0.X.0-beta) 


Suggested change

- [ ] Assign a final release tag ( v0.X.0 ) to the same commit that contains the validated release-candidate tag (e.g. v0.X.0-beta)

- [ ] Assign a final release tag ( v0.X.0 ) to the same commit that contains the validated release-candidate tag (e.g. v0.X.0)

Ivansete-status · 2025-12-01T12:56:46Z

docs/contributors/release-process.md

+   6a. **Automated testing**
+     - Ensure all the unit tests (specifically js-waku tests) are green against the release candidate.
+     - Ask Vac-QA and Vac-DST to run their available tests against the release candidate, share all release candidate with both team.
+
+     > We need additional report like [this](https://www.notion.so/DST-Reports-1228f96fb65c80729cd1d98a7496fe6f) specificly from DST team.


This release-process.md should be more concise.
There is duplicated information.
Let's keep it as small as possible and keep all the information in either .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_full_release.md or .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/prepare_beta_release.md

I assumed release-process.md would have detailed process with command that doesn’t fit into the checklist template.

so i thinking release-process.md is kind of referance if releaser confuse in with checklist.

@Ivansete-status

My only concern is that we would need to maintain two similar information from different places. But is fine, we can revisit if there is confusion in the future

Ivansete-status

Thanks for it! 🙌
Make sure the zerokit change is not added and ci should be green without issues

github-actions bot assigned darshankabariya Nov 20, 2025

darshankabariya marked this pull request as draft November 20, 2025 10:40

darshankabariya changed the title ~~chore: new release process ( beta and stable )~~ chore: new release process ( beta and full ) Nov 20, 2025

Ivansete-status reviewed Nov 20, 2025

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darshankabariya added 5 commits November 21, 2025 15:18

chore: initial update of release-process

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chore: prepare release guide

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chore: prepare release guide

452cffb

chore: update release template

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chore: update release process md

8451b57

darshankabariya force-pushed the release_process_update branch from e6889ab to 8451b57 Compare November 21, 2025 09:48

darshankabariya requested review from Ivansete-status, NagyZoltanPeter, fcecin and fryorcraken November 21, 2025 09:54

fcecin reviewed Nov 21, 2025

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chore: update release process md

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darshankabariya marked this pull request as ready for review November 21, 2025 11:21

darshankabariya requested a review from fcecin November 21, 2025 11:27

fcecin approved these changes Nov 21, 2025

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Ivansete-status reviewed Nov 25, 2025

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darshankabariya and others added 2 commits November 25, 2025 17:49

Merge branch 'master' into release_process_update

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chore: prepare release guide

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darshankabariya requested a review from Ivansete-status November 26, 2025 06:53

Merge branch 'master' into release_process_update

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darshankabariya added 2 commits December 1, 2025 18:05

update again

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update again

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darshankabariya requested a review from Ivansete-status December 1, 2025 12:58

update again

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Ivansete-status approved these changes Dec 1, 2025

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update again

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darshankabariya merged commit 7eb1fdb into master Dec 1, 2025
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darshankabariya deleted the release_process_update branch December 1, 2025 13:34


		All items below are to be completed by the owner of the given release.

		- [ ] Create release branch ( e.g. release/v0.X.0 )

	- [ ] Update infra config with any deprecated arguments or changed options.
	- [ ] Update infra config with any deprecated arguments or changed options.
	- [ ] Update waku.sandbox with [this deployment job](https://ci.infra.status.im/job/nim-waku/job/deploy-waku-sandbox/).

	- [ ] Create release branch ( e.g. release/v0.X.0-beta ) if it doesn't exist.
	- [ ] Create release branch with major and minor only ( e.g. release/v0.X ) if it doesn't exist.


		- [ ] Proceed with release

		- [ ] Assign a final release tag ( v0.X.0 ) to the same commit that contains the validated release-candidate tag (e.g. v0.X.0-beta)

chore: new release process ( beta and full ) #3647

chore: new release process ( beta and full ) #3647

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darshankabariya commented Nov 20, 2025 •

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