OpenZeppelin Contracts uses a fully automated release process that takes care of compiling, packaging, and publishing the library, all of which is carried out in a clean CI environment (GitHub Actions), implemented in the (release-cycle) workflow. This helps to reduce the potential for human error and inconsistencies, and ensures that the release process is ongoing and reliable.
Changesets is used as part of our release process for CHANGELOG.md management. Each change that is relevant for the codebase is expected to include a changeset.
The release cycle happens on release branches called release-vX.Y. Each of these branches starts as a release candidate (rc) and is eventually promoted to final.
A release branch can be updated with cherry-picked patches from master, or may sometimes be committed to directly in the case of old releases. These commits will lead to a new release candidate or a patch increment depending on the state of the release branch.
%%{init: {'gitGraph': {'mainBranchName': 'master'}} }%%
gitGraph
commit id: "Feature A"
commit id: "Feature B"
branch release-vX.Y
commit id: "Start release"
commit id: "Release vX.Y.0-rc.0"
checkout master
commit id: "Feature C"
commit id: "Fix A"
checkout release-vX.Y
cherry-pick id: "Fix A" tag: ""
commit id: "Release vX.Y.0-rc.1"
commit id: "Release vX.Y.0"
checkout master
merge release-vX.Y
commit id: "Feature D"
commit id: "Patch B"
checkout release-vX.Y
cherry-pick id: "Patch B" tag: ""
commit id: "Release vX.Y.1"
checkout master
merge release-vX.Y
commit id: "Feature E"