Cabal/cabal-install 3.16.0.0 release checklist

[ffaf1]

Release manager: @ulysses4ever

Regressions

• [ ] List all open regressions (in master and 3.14), most likely.
  • [ ] #10961
  • [ ] #10920
  • [ ] #10605
  • [ ] #10915

PRs of interest

• [ ] https://github.com/haskell/cabal/pull/10684
• [ ] https://github.com/haskell/cabal/pull/8889
• [ ] https://github.com/haskell/cabal/pull/10969
• [ ] https://github.com/haskell/cabal/pull/10996 --with-repl stuff is high priority IMO (Artem)

GHC concerns

• [x] Ask GHC devs what the name of the new release is, and if they plan to further add extensions or flags. @ffaf1 (done: Benjamin Gamari replied: “The next major series will be 9.14. We do not plan on adding any additional extensions. I believe the same is true of flags.”)

Release checklist

• [x] Create a release checklist ticket @ffaf1 done!

A.1 Before the release

• [x] Pre-flight Checks: See Preflight checks @ffaf1 #11011
• [ ] Changelog generation: See CHANGELOGS
  • Note: skip until we cut the branch
• [ ] Bump version numbers: See Bumping version numbers
  • [x] SPDX @geekosaur https://github.com/haskell/cabal/pull/11014
  • [x] hackage-security @geekosaur https://github.com/haskell/hackage-security/pull/327
  • [x] update max ghc version @geekosaur https://github.com/haskell/cabal/pull/11016
  • [x] re-pin index state and re-test with new hackage-security @geekosaur https://github.com/haskell/cabal/pull/11024
  • [x] bump copyrights @geekosaur #11021
  • [ ] bump versions
    • [ ] master (3.17) @geekosaur #11022
    • [ ] 3.16
• [ ] Tag the release: See Tagging the release
• [ ] Upload release candidates: See Uploading package release candidates to Hackage
• [ ] Publish artifacts: See Publishing the artifacts
• [ ] Publish everything else: See Publishing everything else
• [ ] Tweak things as needed, merge patches to fix regressions
• [ ] Re-upload the candidates on Hackage based on the latest tag, and publish them

A.2 After the release

• [ ] prepare a list of contributors for the release, e.g., git log --use-mailmap --pretty=format:%an Cabal-v3.6.1.0...Cabal-v3.8.1.0 | sort -u and don't forget to mention "reviewers, QA testers, devops and others"
• [ ] advertise on discourse, haskell-cafe and cabal-devel and in particular, mention:
  • How to install using ghcup
  • Changelogs
  • Fixed regression compared to the previous version
  • Regressions still unfixed
  • How great our community is and how we love and cherish collaborators
• [ ] ask kind souls to cross-post to Mastodon, Matrix (#haskell-tooling and #haskell-language-server), Discord, Twitter, Reddit. Copy the links to #hackage so that others can upvote
• [ ] Move the tickets that haven't made it to the release to the next one.
• [ ] party 🥳

[ulysses4ever]

we're skipping things that require a release branch to win some us time to merge some remaining PRs before the cut. E.g. C.2.

Currently at C.3.

Adding GHC 9.14 to CI (C.3.3) isn't easily possible yet because there's not even an official branch, there's a wip-branch in https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/merge_requests/14404 Same issue with bootstrap, c.3.5.

I propose to try finishing C.3 as much as possible without C.3.3 and add the remaining items on the checklist in OP.

[ulysses4ever]

I added a "PRs of interest" section in the OP where I list PRs that would be good to get into 3.16. Not all of that may happen but it's good to have a target. I used the 3.16 Milestone to collect those.

[geekosaur]

So we have two meta issues that are worked around for the time being but should be resolved properly for 3.18 if we can't get them figured out in time for 3.16:

• splitmix-0.1.3 references a symbol on Macs that GitHub's runners say doesn't exist
• the custom Setup for cabal-testsuite doesn't work with 3.14.1.1 and needs to be modified as per #9718

I've pinged the relevant people about both.

[ulysses4ever]

Tags pushed, candidates published

[ulysses4ever]

Will have to redo tags and candidates because of the missed copyright years updates, see #11061

[geekosaur]

Redone.

[ulysses4ever]

Release happened. Here's a discourse post: https://discourse.haskell.org/t/12544

Sadly, there's a big problem with it right off the bat: HLS won't be available. See https://github.com/haskell/cabal/pull/11101

[ulysses4ever]

It makes sense to close it now and continue with any leftovers on #11274