release/

Releasing

This document covers releases of the kpt CLI and library (root Go module github.com/kptdev/kpt) and the separate Go API module github.com/kptdev/kpt/api.

Main kpt release

To cut a new kpt release perform the following:

• Check that dependencies are up to date and that all required release content is in the main branch
• Navigate to the project release page and select "draft new release"
• Leave the target as "main", and create a new tag to match the release version
  • Versioning follows semantic versioning rules
  • Alpha and beta versions are used to make releases before content is fully stabilized
  • Increment the number after "alpha" or "beta" by one when making this type of release - e.g. v1.0.0-beta.58 could come after v1.0.0-beta.57
• Release title should be left blank - it will be auto-filled from the tag
• Click "Generate release notes" to auto-generate the content of the release. Edit this as appropriate to add extra context
• If the release is an alpha or beta release and there is already a stable version available, the "set as a pre-release" check-box should be checked. Otherwise, leave it checked as "set as the latest release"
• Check the "create a discussion for this release" check-box
• Click "publish" and then verify that the github action has run and the artefacts have been produced

Pushing a root-level version tag (for example v1.2.3) runs the kpt Release workflow (GoReleaser, container images, and provenance).

kpt API module (github.com/kptdev/kpt/api)

The api/ directory is its own Go module. Consumers pin it with go get, for example:

go get github.com/kptdev/kpt/api@v1.0.0

That @v1.0.0 form is the module version; the corresponding git tag in this repo is api/v1.0.0.

Tags must use the api/ prefix so the version matches the module subdirectory (see Go modules: VCS version).

What runs in CI

When you push a tag that matches api/v[0-9]+.[0-9]+.[0-9]+* (for example api/v1.2.3), .github/workflows/release-api.yml runs: it uses the Go version from api/go.mod and runs make api.

Monorepo and root go.mod

The root module uses replace github.com/kptdev/kpt/api => ./api so local and CI builds use the workspace copy. A tagged archive for github.com/kptdev/kpt@<version> still includes ./api at that commit.