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Release tracking ticket for GHC 9.6.1

This is the release checklist for the %9.6.1 milestone. See #16816 for the template that this was derived from.

Pre-fork checklist (major-only)

When forking a new release branch for a new major release series (e.g. ghc-9.0), please check the following:

  • Verify that haddock's development branch (namely the branch corresponding to GHC's previous major release, e.g. ghc-8.10) has been merged into ghc-head.
  • Remove the release notes for the previous release (e.g. docs/users_guide/8.6.*-notes.rst)
  • In configure.ac update MinBootGhcVersion to be the major version of the last supported bootstrap compiler. We currently guarantee bootstrapping with the last two major releases; therefore, when preparing, e.g., GHC 9.4 you should set MinBootGhcVersion to 9.0.
  • Create the new branch: git branch ghc-9.0
  • In the new branch bump the version number in configure.ac to, e.g., 9.0
  • In master bump the version number in configure.ac to that of the next development series, e.g., 9.1 and ensure that MinBootGhcVersion is set correctly
  • Tag this master commit as, e.g., ghc-9.1-start
  • Push all of the above tags and branches
  • After forking remove release notes from master and start a new set of release notes for the next release

Pre-release checklist

  • Ensure that submodules are on released tags (the below is produced using this script):
    • libraries/Cabal: version todo (https://github.com/haskell/cabal/issues/8571)
    • libraries/Win32: version todo
    • libraries/binary: version todo
    • libraries/bytestring: version todo
    • libraries/containers: version todo
    • libraries/deepseq: version todo
    • libraries/directory: version todo
    • libraries/filepath: version todo
    • libraries/haskeline: version todo
    • libraries/mtl: version todo
    • libraries/parsec: version todo
    • libraries/pretty: version todo
    • libraries/process: version todo
    • libraries/terminfo: version todo
    • libraries/text: version todo
    • libraries/time: version todo
    • libraries/transformers: version todo
    • libraries/unix: version todo
    • libraries/xhtml: version todo
    • utils/haddock: version todo
    • utils/hsc2hs: version todo
  • Non-released submodules up-to-date:
  • Release notes (docs/users_guide/x.y.z-notes.rst) written
  • Release notes linked in docs/users_guide/release-notes.rst
  • autoconf scripts updated
  • Update the Hadrian bootstrap metadata
  • Check that Unicode database in base (libraries/base/cbits/README.Unicode) reflects current standard release (http://www.unicode.org/versions/latest/).
  • LlvmVersion in configure.ac is targetting intended LLVM version
  • Release notes mentions LLVM version requirement
  • llvm-targets file updated
  • Changelogs updated (these can be checked using .gitlab/linters/check-changelogs.sh):
    • libraries/ghc-prim
    • libraries/ghc-bignum
    • libraries/hpc (upstream: ghc/hpc>)
    • libraries/base
  • Verify that the ~"backport needed" label has no more issues/merge requests needing backport
  • Verify that all CI builds are green before moving to release checklist
  • Update hadrian bootstrap plans for the latest compiler releases

Release checklist

  • Ensure that the Migration page is up-to-date
  • Push a provision provisional release commit to trigger the release builds using git push -o ci.variable="RELEASE_JOB=yes"
  • Wait until builds finish; verify that they finished successfully
  • Fetch release artifacts TODO: documentation
  • Sign and push release artifacts to downloads.haskell.org [TODO: documentation]
  • Make a release tag
  • Release/revise GHC-maintained libraries on Hackage using this script:
    • libraries/base
    • libraries/ghc-prim
    • libraries/array
    • libraries/stm
    • libraries/ghc-heap
    • libraries/ghc-compact
    • libraries/ghc-boot
    • libraries/ghc-boot-th
    • libraries/hpc
    • libraries/libiserv
    • libraries/template-haskell
    • libraries/ghc-bignum
  • Update ghc/homepage>:
    • Write download page (see ghc/homepage>)
    • Add news item to index.html
    • Add link to download.shtml. Be sure to link to the Migration guide.
    • Look over changes locally
    • Add release announcement to GHC blog. Be sure to link to the Migration guide.
    • Push changes to master
  • Announce on: GHC developers <ghc-devs@haskell.org>, GHC Users <glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org>, Haskell Cafe <haskell-cafe@haskell.org>
  • Announce on: Haskell Discourse, /r/haskell, Twitter
  • Update latest symlink on downloads.haskell.org

Post-release checklist

Edited by Ben Gamari
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