[HELP] NuttX release flow documentation

[fdcavalcanti]

Description

Hi all!

Just so I understand what's going on.

Which standard does NuttX follow during release? Do we have that written somewhere? I checked the documentation and it does not say.

It's not clear to me what are target release dates, how and when we sync release/master and how testing works during this process (does the CI run automatically for release branches on both apps and nuttx for instance).

Am I missing something on the documentation or maybe there is another forum?
This could be a moment to gather some suggestions and improve the docs.

Would appreciate if someone could enlighten me.

Thanks!

Verification

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[lupyuen]

Thanks @fdcavalcanti for the great question! Yep the NuttX Release Process really needs to be documented, here's what I learnt so far:

• We target to have a NuttX Release Every 3 Months

• NuttX Release Process begins with the Staging of the Source Code for nuttx repo (releases/12.7) andnuttx-apps repo (releases/12.7).

• CI Workflow will rebuild nuttx repo (releases/12.7) with the matching version of nuttx-apps repo (releases/12.7)

• Which happens because of this CI Workflow Logic

• Issues with the Staged Source Code (fail to build / fail to run) will require fixes to be Backported from master branch to releases/12.7 (Like this)

• The Release Source Code is published for Validation and Voting

• Validate NuttX Release is the final step of the Release Process, which checks that everything works OK on Real Hardware

• If the Vote Fails: We backport the required fixes from master branch to releases/12.7, and bump up the release from RC0 to RC1 for validation and voting

Hi @acassis: Anything I missed?

[jerpelea]

@lupyuen

For now I am the release manager for Nuttx and I follow and adapt this process
https://gist.github.com/jerpelea/67895da8797f040ba3b113280fdcd57b

[acassis]

@lupyuen I think you listed all the steps correctly. Maybe we can use these topics you listed together with the documentation from @jerpelea to create an official documentation. What do you think?