This repository is used to kick off new Istio releases. Updating a parameter file and sending out a git pull request triggers release automation to build release artifacts, run release qualification tests, and if all required tests have passed, publish the release artifacts to the final release destination.

Fork and clone this repository in your github environnment. You will start a new release by sending out a pull request.

You can kick off a new daily release by running the following command.

GIT_BRANCH={branch} ./scripts/trigger_daily_release.sh

You must provide the istio release branch where you want to build the release from.

The script automatically determines the latest branch SHA and the release version using the branch name and timestamp, checks out the same branch in this repo (this repository has the same set of release branchhes found in istio/istio), and updates daily/release_params.sh.

All you need to do is to send a new pull request containing the updated parameter file to trigger a kick off a new daily release. As a convention, please use DAILY <release version> as the PR title.

A release pull request first triggers a prow job named "prow/release-build", which builds request artifacts and make them available for testing. This step also builds docker images, and have them pushed to a public registry.

Once "prow/release-build" completes, the test jobs are started. This is the release qualification step which consumes the release artifacts and make sure they are up to a certain standard, including:

• istio/istio unit and integration tests
• istio/istio E2E tests (using the release images)
• istioctl tests
• upgrade/downupgrade tests

You can monitor both the build and test status and log in the PR. In particular, you can find the build log in the "prow/release-build" log.

Test failures will be retried up to three times. Once all tests have passed, the pull request will be merged automatically. A post-submit job will do all the heavy lifting of publishing release artifacts to the right place. You can find the post-submit job at http://prow.istio.io/?repo=istio-releases%2Fpipeline&type=postsubmit.

Similar to daily releases, a monthly (or LTS/snapshot/patch) release can be kicked off by sending out a new pull request. As the monthly release parameters are typically determined manually, you can first check out the right release branch (e.g. release-1.1), and modify the parameters directly in monthly/release_params.sh.

export CB_BRANCH=master
export CB_COMMIT=f927d1ec433cecc6f66fcdcc0af38327b70efa68
export CB_PIPELINE_TYPE=monthly
export CB_VERSION=1.2.0-snapshot.0

• CB_BRANCH is the release branch in istio/istio where you want to build from. You must modify release_params.sh in the corresponding branch. (i.e. if you are building a monthly from istio release-1.1, you must update release_params.sh in the release-1.1 of this repo.

• CB_COMMIT is the commit SHA in the istio/istio release branch where you want to build the release from.

• CB_PIPELINE_TYPE is the release type. It should be monthly for monthly releases and you can leave the existing value alone.

• CB_VERSION is the new release version. Please follow the vesion semantic as documented in https://istio.io/about/release-cadence/#naming-scheme. E.g. 1.0.6 or 1.1.0-snapshot.5.

• CB_VERIFY_CONSISTENCY makes sure that the same API sha is pulled to Proxy and Istio repos.

Make sure that you are checking for sha in the same branch (ie release-1.1 for all repos)

1. In istio/proxy, update ISTIO_API and ISTIO_API_SHA256 in repositories.bzl

To get sha256 run

COMMIT=commit_sha
wget https://github.com/istio/api/archive/${COMMIT}.tar.gz
sha256sum ${COMMIT}.tar.gz

2. In istio/proxy, update ISTIO_API sha in istio.deps.

3. In istio/istio run dep

go get -u github.com/golang/dep/cmd/dep
dep ensure -update istio.io/api

It should update both istio.io/api sha and digest in https://github.com/istio/istio/blob/master/Gopkg.lock

You can even configure some advanced release parameters if you know what you are doing. Example: https://github.com/istio-releases/pipeline/pull/102/files

And then you can send a PR with this file change to trigger release automation. As a convention, please use MONTHLY <release version> as the PR title.

After the PR is merged, a draft release will be created at https://github.com/istio/istio/releases. You will need to click the "Edit" button, update fields like title and release notes location, and then click "Public Release" to make it publicly visible.

You can find all the pull requests in https://github.com/istio-releases/pipeline/pulls. And you can find the build and test log in the presubmit jobs of these pull requests.

All presubmit and postsubmit jobs that run in this repository can be found at https://prow.istio.io/?repo=istio-releases%2Fpipeline

Occassionally Prow misses webhook notifications and will not kick off the required presubmit/postsubmit jobs to complete daily releases. These are transient problems and things should just restore the next day. Or you can manually kick off a build by following the above steps.

As a maintainer, make sure you have write permission on this repositroy. Then, set an environment variable GITHUB_TOKEN_FILE point to a local file that contains your github token (create one at https://github.com/settings/tokens if you do not have any).

With this, running scripts/trigger_daily_release.sh will create a temporary branch and a pull request for you automatically.

This repositoy must have the same release branches (i.e. master, release-x.y) found in istio/istio.

Build, test, and release job config can be found at https://github.com/istio/test-infra/tree/master/prow/cluster/jobs/istio-releases/pipeline. Each branch has its own configuration. If you want to add a new release test, this is where you should look.

The scheduled jobs config can be found at https://github.com/istio/test-infra/blob/master/prow/cluster/jobs/all-periodics.yaml

This repository has some wrapper scripts in https://github.com/istio-releases/pipeline/tree/master/scripts, but the actual build, test, and release scripts are in istio/istio.

build/release: https://github.com/istio/istio/tree/master/release test: https://github.com/istio/istio/tree/master/prow

Legacy! Releases were built by GCB (Google Clound Builder) before, and these prefixes had not been cleaned up.

Daily releases are simply scheduled jobs that invokes ./scripts/trigger_daily_release.sh daily. These jobs can be found at:

• master: https://prow.istio.io/?type=periodic&job=release-trigger-daily-build-master
• release-1.1: http://prow.istio.io/?type=periodic&job=release-trigger-daily-build-release-1.0
• release-1.0: http://prow.istio.io/?type=periodic&job=release-trigger-daily-build-release-1.1

There is also a janitor job that runs every 30 minutes. It goes through all the open release pull requests in istio-releases/pipeline, merges the requests that have all tests passed, closes the requests that have expired, and triggers retest in case a test fails. The job can be found at http://prow.istio.io/?type=periodic&job=release-requests-janitor

1. Add the new release branch (e.g. release-1.2) in istio/istio, istio/api, istio/proxy, and istio/cni.
2. Add the same release branch in this repo (i.e. https://github.com/istio-releases/pipeline) from master, and update the param files (e.g. https://github.com/istio-releases/pipeline/blob/master/daily/release_params.sh) with the new branch name.
3. Create a new Prow config for the new branch, by cloning https://github.com/istio/test-infra/blob/master/prow/cluster/jobs/istio-releases/pipeline/istio-releases.pipeline.master.yaml to istio-releases.pipeline.release-x.y.yaml, and update the branch name in it.

Find the prow config for the branch you want to add a new job in https://github.com/istio/test-infra/tree/master/prow/cluster/jobs/istio-releases/pipeline, and add/update the job config there.

• Tarballs: https://gcsweb.istio.io/gcs/istio-prerelease/daily-build/
• Images: gcr.io/istio-release

• Tarballs: https://github.com/istio/istio/releases
• Images: docker.io/istio

See https://github.com/istio-releases/pipeline/issues/257