Guidelines for releases

[ftyers]

We should write some general guidelines for releases.

[TinoDidriksen]

Some exist, but need major surgery:

• https://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Release_policy
• https://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Making_a_release
• https://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Packaging

[flammie]

I think in current ecosystem it would make sense to have ~standard ci test suite to pass prior to release. There's a whole bunch of different attempts for tests (make check style) in various languages and pairs we just need to figure out the best and most generic one. Particularly I think the current Release policy list:

• Testvoc should be clean
• Whether it compiles and runs with the latest release of apertium/lttoolbox (and other required packages)
• Whether it compiles and installs correctly as a tarball created with make dist (see Making_a_release#Testing)
• If there are regression tests, check that these pass
• Run a corpus through it, and ensure there are no debug symbols (#, @)

can be easily automated as ci test.

[TinoDidriksen]

Currently, I do the middle 3 (builds with release versions; builds from tarball; run make test) as part of the packaging work. I assume language devs have done testvoc and corpus to their own standards before they hand it off to me.

But yes, this can be automated. https://github.com/apertium/apertium-packaging/issues/16 is also relevant.