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Releases and versioning

This document describes the current release and versioning strategy. This strategy is likely to change as Rerun matures.

See also

Release cadence

New Rerun versions are released approximately once every month. Sometimes we do out-of-schedule patch releases.

Library versioning and release cadence

Each release include new versions of:

  • All Rust crates
  • The Python SDK
  • The Rust SDK
  • The C++ SDK

We use semantic versioning. All versions are increased in lockstep, with a minor version bump each time (0.1.0, 0.2.0, 0.3.0, …).

This means we might add breaking changes in each new release.

In rare cases we will do patch releases, e.g. 0.3.1, when there is a critical bug fix. These patch releases will not contain any breaking changes.

We sometimes do pre-releases. Then we use the versioning 0.2.0-alpha.0 etc.

Rust version policy

Our Minimum Supported Rust Version (MSRV) is always at least one minor release behind the latest Rust version, and ideally two releases.

  • This means users of our libraries aren't forced to update to the very latest Rust version
  • This lets us sometimes avoid new bugs in the newly released Rust compiler

Data and communication versioning

We have not yet committed to any backwards or forwards compatibility.

We tag all data files (.rrd files) and communication protocols with the Rerun version number. If there is a version mismatch, a warning is logged, but an attempt is still made to load the older or newer data.

Releases

Release builds of the Python Wheels are triggered by pushing a release tag to GitHub in the form 0.2.0. If we are doing a patch release, we do a branch off of the latest release tag (e.g. 0.3.0) and cherry-pick any fixes we want into that branch.

Release process

1. Check the root Cargo.toml to see what version we are currently on.

2. Create a release branch.

The name should be:

  • release-0.x.y for final releases and their release candidates.
  • release-0.x.y-alpha.N where N is incremented from the previous alpha, or defaulted to 1 if no previous alpha exists.

Note that release-0.x is invalid. Always specify the y, even if it is 0, e.g. release-0.15.0 instead of release-0.15.

For minor release, the branch is typically created from main. For patch release, the branch is typically created from the previous release's tag.

Image showing the branch create UI. You can find the new branch button at https://github.com/rerun-io/rerun/branches

Note: you do not need to create a PR for this branch -- the release workflow will do that for you.

3. If this is a patch release, cherry-pick commits for inclusion in the release into the branch.

When done, run cargo semver-checks to check that we haven't introduced any semver breaking changes.

⚠️ Any commits between the last release's tag and the docs-latest branch should also be cherry-picked, otherwise these changes will be lost when docs-latest is updated.

# On branch `release-0.x.y`
git fetch origin docs-latest:docs-latest
git cherry-pick 0.x.z..docs-latest

Where z is the previous patch number.

Note that the cherry-pick will fail if there are no additional docs-latest commits to include, which is fine.

4. Update CHANGELOG.md and clean ups.

Update the change log. It should include:

  • A one-line summary of the release
  • A multi-line summary of the release
  • A gif showing a major new feature
  • Run pip install GitPython && scripts/generate_changelog.py > new_changelog.md
  • Edit PR descriptions/labels to improve the generated changelog
  • Copy-paste the results into CHANGELOG.md.
  • Editorialize the changelog if necessary
  • Make sure the changelog includes instructions for handling any breaking changes

Remove all the attr.docs.unreleased attributes in all .fbs files, followed by pixi run codegen.

Remove the speculative link markers (?speculative-link).

Once you're done, commit and push onto the release branch.

5. Run the release workflow.

In the UI:

  • Set Use workflow from to the release branch you created in step (2).
  • Then choose one of the following values in the dropdown:

    • alpha if the branch name is release-x.y.z-alpha.N. This will create a one-off alpha release.

    • rc if the branch name is release-x.y.z. This will create a pull request for the release, and publish a release candidate.

    • final for the final public release

Image showing the Run workflow UI. It can be found at https://github.com/rerun-io/rerun/actions/workflows/release.yml

6. Wait for the workflow to finish

The PR description will contain next steps.

Note: there are two separate workflows running -- the one building the release artifacts, and the one running the PR checks. You will have to wait for the former in order to get a link to the artifacts.

7. Merge changes to main

For minor release, merge the release branch to main.

For patch release, manually create a new PR from main and cherry-pick the required commits. This includes at least the CHANLGE.log update, plus any other changes made on the release branch that hasn't been cherry-picked in the first place.