Weekly Release Notes

Summary

How to do release notes.

Details

Release notes are done with the General Release of Dendron that comes out each Tuesday. These provide quite a bit more context compared to the changelog notes, including:

• Highlights
• Upcoming events
• Discord community messages from the today-i-learned (Private) and starboard (Private) channels
• Community contributions: Contributors that have been raising issues, contributing code, contributing docs, etc. For more information, view the documentation on Discord Roles (Private)
• General announcements: Blog posts, videos, other events/resources of note, etc.

The release notes also serve as the content submitted to subscribers of the Dendron Newsletter.

Example

• Video tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTEHbTO5bnA

Steps

Before the release

• due: 23:00 UTC Monday

1. Run workspace sync in your local dev branch for dendron-site vault
2. Create a new release branch with format release/<version> (eg. release/083)
3. Update the changelog > Changelog Update
4. Create a new release under changelog.release.{date-with-dashes}
   • NOTE: date should line up with the tuesday of the coming week and should be created in dendron-site
     • a template will fill after you create the note
   • eg. 0.84 (Private)
   1. Fill out the highlights using Release Highlights
5. Fill our community highlights using Community Highlights (Private)
6. Add to and update everything under ## Community
   • See General Updates (Private) from the weekly journal
     • Add Greenhouse to Release Notes (if applicable - should be first week of month)
     • Add Crop Updates to Release Notes (if applicable)
     • Highlight Published Sites on Release Notes
     • Any other announcements
   • Starbord and TIL Highlights
   • Dendron Reading Series
   • Event Reminders
     • Make sure to include PST and UTC times
     • If Greenhouse Talk information is known, make sure the Subject and Description is populated.
   • Update Changelog range at bottom of release note
   • NOTE: the current oncall should have done the contributor updates for support issues in dendron repo, you should check dendron-site site and dendron-blog blog for additional issues
7. commit and push changes as an open PR
8. The evening before, create a new Discord thread in #dendron-team with the title weekly-release yyyy-mm-dd

• Template: Discord Thread Start
  • Make sure to change the values of hours estimate, and of the weekly journal names
    • Hours estimate: Amount of hours before 10AM PST
• This is done to give the teams a heads up to get docs in, remaining updates to the Ready to Ship section, etc. ahead of time
• Add second comment in Discord thread with link to release PR, tagging Kevin
  • ex. @kevin In-progress release/changelog PR: <PR Link>

Day of release

• Video example: https://youtu.be/UTEHbTO5bnA?t=1597

1. ping @john (Private) about transferring community highlights to the release notes

   • He needs to create the weekly.journal.*.contributions contributor highlights
   • after john has finished transferring highlights, pull down changes and create a thread in dendron-team titled weekly-release {date-with-dashes} and use the Release template

2. after approval, merge changes to master and push

   • First confirm that dev currently includes all commits in master
   • Once confirmed, merge dev into master

     # In the dendron.dendron-site repo
     git checkout dev
     git pull # Gets latest changes
     git checkout master
     git pull # Gets latest changes
     git merge dev # Adds changes in dev to master
     git push # Publishes updated master
     

3. verify that changes are up

4. use markdown export pod to copy to clipboard on release notes (ensure wikilinkToUrl is true)

5. create release notes under area.product.release.{date}.notes

   • NOTE: loom video embed links will not render in discord, use a regular loom link instead (eg. https://www.loom.com/share/c6e8e75605d5416a9a8aa67465a6df17)
   • Add @everyone to the top
   • to create release notes, copy everything above ## Community and Thank Yous
   • This should include:
     • Release Highlights descriptions
     • Highlights section
     • Everything Else section
     • Thank Yous
   • example: Notes (Private)
   • Add the URL link to the release directly beneath Dendron {version} has sprouted
     • example:

       Dendron 0.87 has sprouted  :seedling:
       https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/qcwfzax4uaqj54evgp8li5y/
       

6. create announcement notes under area.product.release.{date}.announcement

   • Add @ServerNotify to the top
   • to create announcement notes copy everything in ## Community but leave out Thank Yous, Starboard, Changelog, and Reading Series sections
   • This sections should include:
     • General
     • Events
   • NOTE: make sure all discord mentions come out properly so that folks are notified for their contribution
   • example: Announcement (Private)

7. create reading series notes under area.product.release.{date}.reading-series

   • Use Template
   • Make sure you had already followed Reading Series

After the release

1. Announce release on discord

   • Add contents of area.product.release.{date}.reading-series into #teatime channel
     • Add an emoji related to the story
   • Add contents of area.product.release.{date}.notes into #releases channel
     • Add a :seedling: emoji
   • Add contents of area.product.release.{date}.announcement into #announcements channel
     • Add a :farmer: emoji

2. Announce release on twitter

   • Use a format similar to the following:

     Dendron 0.84 has sprouted 🌱
     
     - Speed improvements in "Dendron: Show Preview"
     - Pod V2 is now available to use directly from dendron-cli
     - New "Community Teatime" events starting this week
     - Contribute #opensource to good first issues in Dendron code
     
     https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/qcwfzax4uaqj54evgp8li5y/
     

3. Announce release on mastodon

   • Use a format similar to Twitter, but optimized for Mastodon. Threads don't work the same in Mastodon, so don't make a thread. It's a one message kind of deal. You can always send a second message (such as upcoming events) at another time.

   • Example format with slight modifications to above:

     Dendron 0.84 #release has sprouted 🌱
     
     - Speed improvements in "Dendron: Show Preview"
     - Pod V2 is now available to use directly from dendron-cli
     - New "Community Teatime" events starting this week
     - Contribute #opensource to good first issues in Dendron code
     
     #dendron #vscode #vscodium
     
     https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/qcwfzax4uaqj54evgp8li5y/
     

4. Release the newsletter updates via Weekly Newsletter

Checklist

Templates

Release

Weekly release notes are ready in dev. Add an 👍 if all looks good

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Children

1. Checklist

Footnotes

1. Repos (Private)˄

2. Repos (Private)˄

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Backlinks

• Weekly Release Notes
• Release Notes and Changelogs
• Checklist
• Concepts
• Quickstart