# Major Releases

## When will we push a major version?

- There is no set schedule for major version releases
- If we need to bump the **minor** (or major) version of Node.JS required to run Renovate
- If we have a few breaking changes "piling up"
- If we have a need to introduce something that will need wider visibility (i.e. some changes to `config:best-practices` )

## Preparing

- Determine what's in the next release by looking at the [Milestones view](https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/milestones)
- Look through [breaking changes in the Issues backlog](https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20label%3Abreaking) or in [the PRs list](https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr+label%3Abreaking)

### Draft release notes

It is worthwhile drafting the release notes ahead of time, ideally on a GitHub Discussion or Issue, so you can preview what GitHub Flavoured Markdown would render as.

For example see [how v42 release notes were drafted](https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/discussions/38841#discussioncomment-14770478).

## Branching workflow

When in the days before the release is ready to land:

1. Create a temporary branch for release, eg `next-major` (from `main`)

- This should **not** be a protected branch (including `next`), as we will be rebasing it regularly

1. Create a PR from `next-major` to `main`
1. Add the `ci:fulltest` label to the PR
1. Note issues to close as part of each PR

- Mark these as closed by the PR by setting them in the PR sidebar's "Development - Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues."

1. For each planned breaking change PR, rebase them + finalise the Git commit history

- Adding the `Closes #...` isn't necessary, as we've set this at a PR level

1. For each planned breaking change PR, change the base branch to `next-major`
1. For each planned breaking change PR, approve + merge them into the `next-major` branch

- **NOTE** that you want to be merging changes that may lead to conflicts (large code changes, some dependency bumps) to the last possible opportunity

1. If required, rebase `next-major` on `main` and re-push back to `next-major`
1. Wait for CI

## Releasing

1. Once `main` is looking quiet, `next-major` is up-to-date, and CI is fully passing, you can proceed
1. Use `git` CLI to push all commits from release branch to main

- **NOTE** that this is a "I'm going to `git push` and bypass branch protection requirements" rather than `git push --force`
- This needs to be separate commits, so they each get their own note in the CHANGELOG
- For v42 release, we:

```sh
git checkout main
git pull
# make sure we're using what's pushed
# also, do not edit anything interactively at this point, as it will break the PR closing mechanism if the commits are different
git rebase origin/next-major
# NOTE THAT THIS DOES NOT REQUIRE A FORCE PUSH
git push
```

1. Wait for release
1. Take draft release notes, and prepend them to the autogenerated release notes from Semantic Release
1. Create a Maintainer Announcement with the release notes

- And optionally add some additional commentary [i.e.](https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/discussions/39133#discussioncomment-14890636) about the previous major release

> [!IMPORTANT]
> The final `git push` to `main` can be performed by users with the Maintain role, which includes all Renovate maintainers.

## Post-release

- Monitor Discussions for early insights about post-release bugs that need to be resolved
- Approve and merge the major bump to the documentation for the new Renovate version [i.e.](https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/pull/44942)
- Update GitHub Action to next major
  - Approve and merge the major version bump from Renovate, which will release the next major of the GitHub Action
  - [i.e.](https://github.com/renovatebot/github-action/pull/1067)
  - Ensure that the Action's new major version shows as default [in the marketplace](https://github.com/marketplace/actions/renovate-bot-github-action)
- Update GitLab CI configuration to next major
  - [i.e.](https://gitlab.com/renovate-bot/renovate-runner/-/merge_requests/3346)
- Add a copy of the JSON Schemas to Schema Store
  - Go to the last tagged release (of the last major version) and download `docs.tgz`
  - Copy the `renovate-schema.json`, `renovate-inherited-schema.json` and `renovate-global-schema.json`
  - See [schemastore#6142](https://github.com/SchemaStore/schemastore/pull/6142) as an example of what configuration may be needed to have the PR build pass
- Close the Milestone for the release
- After some time (usually when the Mend Developer Platform has been live with the new major), mark the previous major version as deprecated:

```sh
% npm deprecate renovate@"<44.0.0" "Renovate versions older than the latest major version are unsupported"
```