The Rust Release Process

Here's how Rust is currently released:

Bump the stable version number (T-6 days, Friday the week before)

Open a PR bumping the version number in src/version. r+ rollup=never this PR.

Mark it as rollup=never, because if it lands in a rollup as not the first PR then other pull requests in that rollup will be incorrectly associated with the prior release.

Promote beta to stable (T-3 days, Monday)

Temporarily turn off GitHub branch protection for the stable branch in rust-lang/rust repo. In your local Rust repo:

$ git fetch origin
$ git push origin origin/beta:stable -f
# make sure that the release notes file is as fresh as possible
$ git checkout origin/master -- RELEASES.md

Re-enable branch protection for the stable branch. Send a PR to rust-lang/rust on the stable branch making the following changes:

Update src/ci/run.sh to pass channel=stable, not channel=beta.

Once the PR is sent, r+ it and give it a high p=1000.

After the PR is merged you'll need to start a dev release. Obtain AWS CLI credentials and run this command from the simpleinfra repository:

./start-release.py dev stable

As soon as this build is done create a blog post on Inside Rust asking for testing. The index is https://dev-static.rust-lang.org/dist/YYYY-MM-DD/index.html.

Test rustup with:

RUSTUP_DIST_SERVER=https://dev-static.rust-lang.org rustup update stable

Promote master to beta (T-2 days, Tuesday)

We need to find out the parent commit in which the PR opened last Monday merged.

Go to that PR, and find the "bors merged commit $SHA into rust-lang:master at the bottom.

Locally, run export BRANCH_POINT=`git rev-parse $SHA^` in the rust-lang/rust checkout. This should be bors-authored merge into master of the PR before the version bump merged.

Create a new branch on rust-lang/cargo for the new beta. Here, rust-lang is the remote for https://github.com/rust-lang/rust.git. Replace YY with the minor version of master. First determine the branch point for cargo in rust-lang/rust, and then create a new branch:

cd rust
git fetch rust-lang
NEW_BETA_VERSION=`git show $BRANCH_POINT:src/version`
CARGO_SHA=`git rev-parse $BRANCH_POINT:src/tools/cargo`
cd src/tools/cargo
git branch rust-$NEW_BETA_VERSION $CARGO_SHA
git push origin rust-$NEW_BETA_VERSION

You'll need to temporarily disable branch protection on GitHub to push the new branch.

Temporarily disable banch protection on GitHub for the beta branch of the Rust repo. Promote rust-lang/rust's master branch to beta as with yesterday:

$ git fetch rust-lang
$ git push rust-lang $BRANCH_POINT:beta -f

Re-enable branch protection on GitHub. Send a PR to the freshly created beta branch of rust-lang/rust which:

Update src/stage0.txt
- Change date to "YYYY-MM-DD" where the date is the archive date the stable build was uploaded
- Change rustc to "X.Y.Z" where that's the version of rustc you just build
- Comment rustfmt: nightly-YYYY-MM-DD
- Uncomment dev: 1
Update src/ci/run.sh to pass "--release-channel=beta".

Master bootstrap update (T-1 day, Wednesday)

Send a PR to the master branch to:

modify src/stage0.txt to bootstrap from yesterday's beta
Remove cfg(stage0) annotated items
Replace cfg(not(stage0)) with nothing

Release day (Thursday)

Decide on a time to do the release, T.

T-30m - Run the following command in a shell with AWS credentials in the simpleinfra repository:
```
./start-release.py prod stable
```
That'll, in the background, schedule the promote-release binary to run on the production secrets (not the dev secrets). That'll sign everything, upload it, update the html index pages, and invalidate the CDN. Note that this takes about 30 minutes right now. Logs are in /opt/rcs/logs.
T-10m - Locally, tag the new release and upload it. Use "x.y.z release" as the commit message.
```
$ git tag -u FA1BE5FE 1.3.0 $COMMIT_SHA
$ git push rust-lang 1.3.0
```
After this Update thanks.rust-lang.org by triggering a build on GitHub Actions on the master branch.
T-5m - Merge blog post.
T - Tweet and post everything!
- Twitter @rustlang
- Reddit /r/rust
- Hacker News
- Users forum

T+5m - Release and tag Cargo. In the rust-lang/rust repository on the stable branch:

# Remote "rust-lang" is github.com/rust-lang/rust.git
git fetch rust-lang
git checkout rust-lang/stable
# Make sure submodules are at the correct revision.
git submodule update
cd src/tools/cargo
# Publish to crates.io. This will publish internal dependencies first (if
# necessary), then publish Cargo itself.
./publish.py
# Where YY is the Rust minor release, add one to it (Rust 1.49.0 = Cargo 0.50.0).
CARGO_VERSION="0.YY+1.0"
git tag -u FA1BE5FE $CARGO_VERSION
git push git@github.com:rust-lang/cargo.git $CARGO_VERSION

T+1hr Send a PR to the beta branch to comment out dev: 1 again and update the date to download from (modifying src/stage0.txt).

Bask in your success.

Rebuilding stable pre-releases

If something goes wrong and we need to rebuild the stable artifacts, merge the PR on the stable branch of the rust-lang/rust repository. Once the commit is merged, issue the following command in a shell with AWS credentials on the simpleinfra repository:

./start-release.py dev stable --bypass-startup-checks

Publishing a nightly based off a try build

Sometimes a PR requires testing how it behaves when downloaded from rustup, for example after a manifest change. In those cases it's possible to publish a new nightly based off that PR on dev-static.rust-lang.org.

Once the try build finishes grab the merge commit SHA and run the following command in a shell with AWS credentials on the simpleinfra repository:

./start-release.py dev nightly $MERGE_COMMIT_SHA

When the release process end you'll be able to install the new nightly with:

RUSTUP_DIST_SERVER=https://dev-static.rust-lang.org rustup toolchain install nightly

Rust Forge