Releasing

This document describes the process of creating a release for the grafana/agent repo. A release includes release assets for everything inside the repository, including Grafana Agent and Grafana Agent Operator.

The processes described here are for v0.24.0 and above.

Release Cycle

A typical release cycle is to have a Release Candidate published for at least 48 hours followed by a Stable Release. 0 or more Patch Releases may occur between the Stable Release and the creation of the next Release Candidate.

Workflows

Once a release is scheduled, a release shepherd is determined. This person will be responsible for ownership of the following workflows:

Release Candidate Publish

1. Create Release Branch

2. Cherry Pick Commits

3. Update Version in Code

4. Tag Release

5. Publish Release

6. Test Release

7. Announce Release

Additional Release Candidate[s] Publish

1. Cherry Pick Commits

2. Update Version in Code

3. Tag Release

4. Publish Release

5. Test Release

6. Announce Release

Stable Release Publish

1. Cherry Pick Commits

2. Update Version in Code

3. Tag Release

4. Publish Release

5. Update Release Branch

6. Test Release

7. Update Helm Charts

8. Announce Release

Patch Release Publish (latest version)

1. Cherry Pick Commits

2. Update Version in Code

3. Tag Release

4. Publish Release

5. Update Release Branch

6. Update Helm Charts

7. Announce Release

Patch Release Publish (older version)

• Not documented yet (but here are some hints)

  • somewhat similar to Patch Release Publish (latest version)

  • find the old release branch

  • cherry-pick commit[s] into it

  • don't update the version in the project on main

  • changes go into the changelog under the patch release version plus stay in unreleased

  • don't update the release branch

  • don't publish in github as latest release

  • don't update deployment tools or helm charts