# RELEASE PROCESS

## 1. BUILD the new Ingress-Nginx-Controller image 

### a. Make changes in codebase

- Make changes as per issue

### b. Make changes to appropriate files in [images directory ](images)

- Make changes in /images 

### c. Create Pull Request

- Open a Pull Request for your changes considering the following steps to fire cloudbuild of a new image for the Ingress-Nginx-Controller:

  - In case of rare CVE fix or other reason to rebuild the nginx-base-image itself, look at the /images directory  [NGINX Base Image](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/tree/main/images/nginx).

  - Example [NGINX_VERSION](images/nginx/rootfs/build.sh#L21), [SHA256](images/nginx/rootfs/build.sh#L124).

  - If you are updating any component in [build.sh](images/nginx/rootfs/build.sh) please also update the SHA256 checksum of that component as well, the cloud build will fail with an exit 10 if not.  

### d. Merge

- Merging will fire cloudbuild, which will result in images beeing promoted to the [staging container registry](https://console.cloud.google.com/gcr/images/k8s-staging-ingress-nginx).

### e. Make sure cloudbuild is a success

- Wait for [cloud build](https://console.cloud.google.com/cloud-build/builds?project=k8s-staging-ingress-nginx). If you don't have access to cloudbuild, you can also have a look at [this](https://prow.k8s.io/?repo=kubernetes%2Fingress-nginx&job=post-*), to see the progress of the build. 

- Proceed only after cloud-build is successful in building a new Ingress-Nginx-Controller image.


## 2. If applicable, BUILD other images

- If applicable, then build a new image of any other related component, ONLY IF APPLICABLE TO THE RELEASE

### a. If applicable then make changes in relevant codebase

- Change code as per issue

### b. Make changes to appropriate files in [images directory ](images)

- Sometimes, you may also be needing to rebuild, images for one or multiple other related components of the Ingress-Nginx-Controller ecosystem. Make changes to the required files in the /images directory, if/as applicable, in the context of the release you are attempting.  :
   
  - [e2e](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/tree/main/test/e2e-image)

    - Update references to e2e-test-runner image [If applicable] :

      - [e2e-image](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/blob/main/test/e2e-image/Dockerfile#L1)
      - [run-in-docker.sh](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/blob/main/build/run-in-docker.sh#L37)

  - [test-runner](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/tree/main/images/test-runner)

  - [echo](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/tree/main/images/echo)

  - [cfssl](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/tree/main/images/cfssl)

  - [fastcgi-helloserver](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/tree/main/images/fastcgi-helloserver)

  - [httpbin](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/tree/main/images/httpbin)

  - [kube-webhook-certgen](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/tree/main/images/kube-webhook-certgen)

### c. Create PR

- Open pull request(s) accordingly, to fire cloudbuild for rebuilding the component's image (if applicable).

### d. Merge

- Merging will fire cloudbuild, which will result in images beeing promoted to the [staging container registry](https://console.cloud.google.com/gcr/images/k8s-staging-ingress-nginx).

### e. Make sure cloudbuild is a success

- Wait for [cloud build](https://console.cloud.google.com/cloud-build/builds?project=k8s-staging-ingress-nginx). If you don't have access to cloudbuild, you can also have a look at [this](https://prow.k8s.io/?repo=kubernetes%2Fingress-nginx&job=post-*), to see the progress of the build. 

- Proceed only after cloud-build is successful in building a new Ingress-Nginx-Controller image.


## 3. PROMOTE the Image(s):

Promoting the images basically means that images, that were pushed to staging container registry in the steps above, now are also pushed to the public container registry. Thus are publicly available. Follow these steps to promote images: 

### a. Get the sha

- Get the sha of the new image(s) of the controller, (and any other component image IF APPLICABLE to release), from the cloudbuild, from steps above 

  - The sha is available in output from [cloud build](https://console.cloud.google.com/cloud-build/builds?project=k8s-staging-ingress-nginx)

  - The sha is also visible here https://console.cloud.google.com/gcr/images/k8s-staging-ingress-nginx/global/controller

  - The sha is also visible [here]((https://prow.k8s.io/?repo=kubernetes%2Fingress-nginx&job=post-*)), after cloud build is finished. Click on the respective job, go to `Artifacts` section in the UI, then again `artifacts` in the directory browser. In the `build.log` at the very bottom you see something like this: 

  ```
  ...
  pushing manifest for gcr.io/k8s-staging-ingress-nginx/controller:v1.0.2@sha256:e15fac6e8474d77e1f017edc33d804ce72a184e3c0a30963b2a0d7f0b89f6b16
  ...
  ```

### b. Add the new image to [k8s.io](http://github.com/kubernetes/k8s.io)

- The sha(s) from the step before (and the tag(s) for the new image(s) have to be added, as a new line, in a file, of the [k8s.io](http://github.com/kubernetes/k8s.io) project of Kubernetes organization. 

- Fork that other project (if you don't have a fork already).

- Other project to fork  [Github repo kubernetes/k8s.io](http://github.com/kubernetes/k8s.io)

- Fetch --all and rebase to upstream if already forked.

- Create a branch in your fork, named as the issue number for this release

- In the related branch, of your fork, edit the file /k8s.gcr.io/images/k8s-staging-ingress-nginx/images.yaml.

- For making it easier, you can edit your branch directly in the browser. But be careful about making any mistake.

- Insert the sha(s) & the tag(s), in a new line, in this file [Project kubernetes/k8s.io Ingress-Nginx-Controller Images](https://github.com/kubernetes/k8s.io/blob/main/k8s.gcr.io/images/k8s-staging-ingress-nginx/images.yaml)  Look at this [example PR and the diff](https://github.com/kubernetes/k8s.io/pull/2536) to see how it was done before 

- Save and commit

### c. Create PR

- Open pull request to promote the new controller image.

### d. Merge

- Merge success is required for next step

- Proceed only after cloud-build is successful in building a new Ingress-Nginx-Controller image.


## 4. PREPARE for a new Release

- Make sure to get the tag and sha of the promoted image from the step before, either from cloudbuild or from [here](https://console.cloud.google.com/gcr/images/k8s-artifacts-prod/us/ingress-nginx/controller). 

- This involves editing of several different files. So carefully follow the steps below and double check all changes with diff/grep etc., repeatedly. Mistakes here impact endusers.

### a. Make sure your git workspace is ready

- Get your git workspace ready 

  - If not using a pre-existing fork, then Fork the repo kubernetes/ingress-nginx

  - Clone (to laptop or wherever)

  - Add upstream

  - Set upstream url to no_push

  - Checkout & switch to branch, named as per related new-release-issue-number

  - If already forked, and upstream already added, then `git fetch --all` and `git rebase upstream/main` (not  origin)

  - Checkout a branch in your fork's clone

  - Perform any other diligence as needed

- Prefer to edit only and only in your branch, in your Fork

### b. Edit the semver tag
  - [TAG](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/blob/main/TAG#L1)

### c. Edit the helm Chart
  - Change the below mentioned [Fields in Chart.yaml](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/blob/main/charts/ingress-nginx/Chart.yaml)
    - version
    - appVersion
    - kubeVersion (**ONLY if applicable**)
    - annotations
      - artifacthub.io/prerelease: "true" 
      - artifacthub.io/changes: |
        - Add the titles of the PRs merged after previous release

### d. Edit the values.yaml
  - [Fields to edit in values.yaml](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/blob/main/charts/ingress-nginx/values.yaml)

    - tag
    - digest

### e. Edit the static manifests

  - Prepare to use a script to update the edit the static manifests and set the "image", "digest", "version" etc. fields to the desired value.


  - This script depends on python and a specific python package `pip3 install ruamel.yaml`

  - Execute the script to update static manifests using that script [generate-deploy-scripts.sh](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/blob/main/hack/generate-deploy-scripts.sh)
  - Open some of the manifests and check if the script worked properly

  - Use grep -ir to search for any misses by the script or undesired changes

  - The script should properly set the image and the digest fields to the desired tag and semver

  - Manually fix one problem that the script can not take care of.

    - This problem is wrong formatting of a snippet in the file [deploy-tls-termination.yaml](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/blob/main/deploy/static/provider/aws/deploy-tls-termination.yaml)
    - In the configMap section, for the configMap named ingress-nginx-controller, the "configMap.data" spec has a snippet

    - This snippet becomes a single line, formatted with the newline character "\n"

    - That single line formatted with "\n" needs to be changed as it does not meet yaml requirements

    - At the time of writing this doc, the 'configMap.data' spec is at line number 39.

    - So editing begins at line 40 (at the time of writing this doc)

    - Make that snippet look like this ;
      ```
      data:
        http-snippet:|
          server{
          listen 2443;
          return 308 https://$host$request_uri;
          }
      ```

### f. Edit the changelog
  [Changelog.md](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/blob/main/Changelog.md) 
    - Add the PRs merged after previous release
    - One useful command to get this list is
      ```
      git log controller-v0.48.1..HEAD --pretty=%s
      ```

### g. Edit the Documentation:
    - Update the version in [docs/deploy/index.md](docs/deploy/index.md)
    - Update Supported versions in the Support Versions table in the README.md 

### h. Edit stable.txt

- Edit the [stable.txt](stable.txt) file(if applicable), in the root of the repo, to reflect the release to be created
- Criteria is a release that has been GA for a while but reported issues are not bugs but mostly /kind support or feature

### i. Update README.md
- Update the table in README.md in the root of the projet to reflect the support matrix. Add the new release version and details in there.

## 5. RELEASE new version

### a. Create PR

- Open PR for releasing the new version of the Ingress-Nginx-Controller ;
  - Look at this PR for how it was done before [example PR](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/pull/7490)
  - Create a PR 

### b. Merge

- Merge should produce manifests as well as chart
- Check
 - `helm repo update`
 - `helm search repo ingress-nginx`

## 6. Github release

- Release to github

- Edit the ghpages file as needed
