Generic Release Process

Stable releases

If you intent to release a new feature release, see the Feature Release Process section instead.

Note

The following commands have been validated when ran in the VM used in the Cilium development process. See for detailed instructions about setting up said VM.

File a new release issue on GitHub, updating the title to reflect the version that will be released.
Follow the steps in the issue template to prepare the release.

Reference steps for the template

Ensure that the necessary backports have been completed and merged. See Backporting process.
1. Update GitHub project and create project if applicable.
2. Update PRs / issues that were added to the vX.Y.Z project, but didn’t make it into this release into the vX.Y.Z+1 project.
Create a new project named “X.Y.Z+1” to automatically track the backports for that particular release.
Checkout the desired stable branch and pull it:
Run the release preparation script:
```
contrib/release/start-release.sh
```

Update the cilium_version and cilium_tag variables in examples/getting-started/Vagrantfile
Set the right version for the CustomResourceDefinitionSchemaVersion in the pkg/k8s/client by following these instructions:
Add all modified files using git add and create a commit with the title Prepare for release v1.0.3.
Follow standard procedures to get the aforementioned PR merged into the desired stable branch. See Submitting a pull request for more information about this process.
Checkout out the stable branch and pull your merged changes:
Create and push release tags to GitHub:
```
contrib/release/tag-release.sh
```
Note

There are two tags that correspond to the same release because GitHub recommends using vx.y.z for release version formatting, and ReadTheDocs, which hosts the Cilium documentation, requires the version to be in format x.y.z For more information about how ReadTheDocs does versioning, you can read their .
Approve the release from the Release Image build UI.
Once the release images are pushed, pull the image digests and prepare a PR with the official release image digests:
```
contrib/release/post-release.sh <URL of workflow run from the release link above>
```
This will leave a file with the format in the local directory which can be used to prepare the release in the next step.
:
1. Copy the official docker manifests for the release from the previous step into the end of the Github release announcement.
Prepare Helm changes for the release using the Cilium Helm Charts Repository and push the changes into that repository (not the main cilium repository):
Prepare Helm changes for the dev version of the branch using the for the vX.Y helm charts, and push the changes into that repository (not the main cilium repository):

In the cilium/cilium repository:
1. git checkout vx.y -b vx.z-dev
2. Change the VERSION file to x.y-dev
3. Run make -C install/kubernetes
In the cilium/charts repository:
```
git push
```
After pushing you can revert all the changes made in the local branch x.y-dev from cilium/cilium.

Announce the release in the #general channel on Slack. Sample text:

:cilium-new: **Announcement:** Cilium vX.Y.Z has been released :tada:
<If security release or major bugfix, short summary of fix here>
For more details, see the release notes:
https://github.com/cilium/cilium/releases/tag/vX.Y.Z

Create a new git branch based on the master branch to update :
Bump the version of Cilium used in the Cilium upgrade tests to use the new release

Please reach out on the #development channel on Slack for assistance with this task.
Update the stable tags for cilium, cilium-operator, cilium-operator-aws, cilium-operator-azure, cilium-operator-generic, cilium-docker-plugin and hubble-relay on DockerHub, for the latest version of Cilium. For example, if the latest version is 1.8, then for all patch releases on the 1.8 line, this step should be performed. Once 1.9 is out for example, then this is no longer required for 1.8.

Note, the DockerHub UI will not allow you to modify the stable tag directly. You will need to delete it, and then create a new, updated one.

make -C install/kubernetes/ check-docker-images

Update the following external tools and guides to point to the released Cilium version. This step is only required on a new minor release like going from 1.8 to 1.9.
- kubeadm