Hello Beamers! I just filled a JIRA BEAM-11217 [1] to make some changes and update the content of the release guide, based on my experiences with running the 2.26.0 release.
Overall, the content is pretty thorough, but it's been added to organically over time, and is due for a bit of a cleanup. My big issues were around consistency within the document itself, that not all pre-reqs for building artifacts are declared, and that it's very easy to lose track of what needs to be done. None are too hard to resolve, just need a few passes to clean them up. Who better than someone who recently ran through it (me)? I've got a PR 13815 [2] out now to address initial formatting issues which for the most part does not affect the content. The main visible change is the email template is fixed (it's not presently displayed), among a few minor content additions. After that, I'd like to rewrite the introduction to clarify the release process and goals (generate and publish artifacts), and clean up some of the constants and such we will use. Overall the goal is to make it easier for any committer to read the document and possibly run a release. There are certainly other changes we can do (like make a release environment container) I understand our wonderful tech writing folks are pretty busy right now with the other website changes. I certainly welcome their input, but likely don't need per-PR review for most of these changes. -------- One bigger change to the content that certainly warrants discussion here: I'd like to remove the manual command level copies of the automation scripts in the release document. My reasoning: They are redundant, leading to lengthy descriptions that are skipped if running the scripts in question. They're often not kept in sync with the scripts themselves. I propose we remove the copies from the guide *and* improve the documentation in the scripts themselves for those who wish to execute the command manually. This will better document what the scripts are doing, and avoids the redundancy, and the errors they can lead to. -------- If you'd like to be included on individual reviews, please let me know, and I'll add you to the various PRs. Otherwise, I'll be leaning on Pablo (2.27.0 release manager) and Cham (2.28.0 release manager) for reviews. Thank you for your time! Robert Burke (2.26.0 Release manager) [1] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-11217 [2] https://github.com/apache/beam/pull/13815
