Make sure you have a clean, up-to-date local copy without any local modifications (ant update).

Create the release locally. It's a good idea to do this first, without touching Subversion or SourceForge. To create a development release:

ant clean release-local

To create a beta release:

ant clean release-local-beta

To create a stable release:

ant clean release-local-stable

This cleans, compiles, runs the unit tests, builds the jar, exe and Mac application, and it also generates the Javadoc and a zip file with source code.

It makes sense to test the three different variants of DrJava: Run the jar on some platform, run the exe on Windows, and run the Mac application on a Mac, because sometimes one of them may be corrupted. This can has happened sometimes for the exe file when building on a Mac, or for the Mac application when building on Windows or Linux.

ant clean

This deletes the locally built release again.

Make the release and put it into Subversion. Run one of:

ant release

ant release-beta

ant release-stable

You may want to add -Dtest-repeat=0 to the command line (e.g. ant -Dtest-repeat=0 release). That tells Ant not to run the unit tests. You can leave it out, but we just ran the unit tests, so it should not be necessary to run them again.

Note that this step may ask you for your SourceForge password if you have never committed code to Subversion from the computer you are working on.

The build script will now create a "tag" of DrJava that will contain exactly the source code versions and libraries used to build this release of DrJava. This is useful in analyzing bugs that users report in a specific version.

Make note of that tag. It should be something like this: drjava-20110205-r5425

To upload files to SourceForge, we will follow this guide written by SourceForge. I find that using SFTP is the easiest.

Log into SFTP. In the following command, replace <username> with your SourceForge username:

sftp <username>,drjava@frs.sourceforge.net

Example: sftp mgricken,drjava@frs.sourceforge.net

On the SFTP server: cd /home/frs/project/d/dr/drjava

If you are building a stable or beta release, type:

cd "1. DrJava Stable Releases"

If you are building a development release, type:

cd "2. DrJava Development Releases"

Create a directory with the name of the tag from step 8 above.

Example: mkdir drjava-20110205-r5425

Change into that directory.

Example: cd drjava-20110205-r5425

Upload the files. You can do that with the command:

put <tag>*

Example: put drjava-20110205-r5425*

Exit SFTP:

exit

Browse to DrJava's SourceForge site at http://sourceforge.net/projects/drjava/develop and log in.

Click on the "Files" tab (or go to https://sourceforge.net/projects/drjava/files/).

Click on 1. DrJava Stable Releases or 2. DrJava Development Releases, find the tag, and enter that directory. You should see the files you uploaded.

Click on the (i) (Info) button next to the exe file, check the Windows checkbox, and press save.

Click on the (i) (Info) button next to the Mac application, check the Mac checkbox, and press save.

Click on the (i) (Info) button next to the jar file, check all the other checkboxes (except Windows and Mac), and press save.

This step changes the default download on DrJava's SourceForge page (in the "Download Now!" button on https://sourceforge.net/projects/drjava/). People downloading directly from the SourceForge page will start getting the new release.

Prepare the release notes text file called readme.txt. I start with a template that looks like the one below. To determine the lists of new features and bug fixes, you can look up the revision number of the last release you're comparing to, and then you can go through the Subversion log and look at the descriptions of the commits, which should hopefully be good enough to tell you what was done. Unless the last version was a stable release, I usually include a comparison to the last stable release as well, which is easy to create just by copying and pasting the lists from individual release notes together.

Available for download at http://drjava.org  .

DrJava is a lightweight programming environment for Java designed to
foster test-driven software development. It includes an intelligent
program editor, an interactions pane for evaluating program text, a
source level debugger, and a unit testing tool.

In addition to bug fixes, this <stable/beta/development> release
includes a number of new features introduced after the last
<stable/beta/development> release:

<brief description of MAJOR features>

Note: Java 1.4 compatibility has been dropped. To use DrJava, you will
need Java 5 or newer.


New features since the last <beta/development> release:
 - list of new features since the last beta/development release



Bug fixes since last <beta/development> release:
 - list of bug fixes since the last beta/development release



New features since the last stable release:
 - list of new features since the last stable release



Bug fixes since the last stable release:
 - list of bug fixes since the last stable release

On the DrJava SourceForge page, upload the release notes into the new release's folder. You can do that either using SFTP again or using the web upload by clicking on "Add File". I just find that SFTP works better for uploading the multiple large files earlier in step 16.

On the DrJava SourceForge page, hover over "Develop" and click on "News" (or go to https://sourceforge.net/news/?group_id=44253, but that link has changed frequently). Click on "Submit" and paste the contents of the readme.txt file into the "Details" part. In the "Subject" line, I usually put something like "DrJava Development Release 20110205-r5425". Press "Submit".

Send an email to the following addresses: drjava@rice.edu, drjava-hackers@lists.sf.net, drjava-users@lists.sf.net

I use the same text that was used in step 22 for the SourceForge news, but I let the following text precede the email:

Dear DrJava Users:

We have made a new <stable/beta/development> version available: <tag>

You can download it from the DrJava website at http://drjava.org/
or from SourceForge.net by following this link:

<link>

You receive this email because you have subscribed to a DrJava mailing list.

Replace the <link> part with the link to the SourceForge page that has the files for this release, i.e. the website you navigated to in step 20. Example: https://sourceforge.net/projects/drjava/files/2.%20DrJava%20Development%20Releases/drjava-20110205-r5425/

SSH into CSnet as javaplt (e.g. ssh javaplt@finland.cs.rice.edu).

cd ~/public_html/drjava

Run the drjava-update-news script. This pulls the SourceForge news onto the DrJava website. Note that for now, this only happens on our CSnet mirror at http://www.cs.rice.edu/~javaplt/drjava/

drjava-update-news

Edit the LATEST_DEV_VERSION.TXT, LATEST_BETA_VERSION.TXT or LATEST_VERSION.TXT file, depending on whether you have a development, beta, or stable version. Put the new tag into the file. Make sure there is no newline at the end of the file!

If you made a stable release, you will want to remove the download links for the beta and development releases. Edit main.shtml and change the line

<!--#include virtual="beta.shtml"-->

to

<!--include virtual="beta.shtml"-->

and

<!--#include virtual="devrelease.shtml"-->

to

<!--include virtual="devrelease.shtml"-->

If you made a beta release, you want the hash mark for the #include of the beta.shtml file, but not for the devrelease.shtml file. If you made a development release, you probably want the hash mark for the devrelease.shtml file, but not for the beta.shtml file.

Do a similar thing as in step 31 for download.shtml. The corresponding lines are

<!--include virtual="beta_long.shtml" -->

and

<!--include virtual="devrelease_long.shtml" -->

Go to http://www.cs.rice.edu/~javaplt/drjava/ and check that the download buttons link to the right files, the ones that you have just released. It's a good idea to download them all and run them, to make sure there were no upload errors.

Delete backup files:

rm *~

Copy the website to the SourceForge server using the drjava-cs-to-sf script. Note that it may also update Javadocs, test coverage, and other files.

drjava-cs-to-sf

That's it! Thanks for helping make DrJava even better.