Notes for developers

Checklist for releasing a new Rockpool version

  • Make a release candidate branch rc/<version> from develop branch on internal gitlab

  • Make sure the version number in version.py has been bumped. We use semantic versioning: major.minor.maintenance.(postN), where (postN) is only for hotfixes

  • Merge master into rc/... to make sure all changes are merged

  • Push rc/.. to origin

  • Make a merge request from rc/... into master

  • Get all primary developers to review the merge request, ensure that all suggested modifications are included

  • Ensure that all pipelines pass, including manual pipelines

  • Update CHANGELOG.md by checking file and removing empty sections and adding the release date

  • Check if copyright date needs to be update in docs/conf.py

  • Once the merge has succeeded, delete the rc/... branch

  • Make and push a tag to the master branch for the new version (i.e. “vX.Y.Z”)

  • Once all CI tasks have succeeded, a manual CI task “pypi_deploy” will be available. Run this task to deploy to PyPI. This task must be run from the internal Rockpool repository and after the commit has been tagged

  • A pull request for the conda feedstock should be created automatically by a conda-forge bot. Check and merge this PR to bump the version on conda-forge

  • Merge master back into develop

  • Bump the version number in the develop branch to something like “vX.Y.Z.dev”

  • Update CHANGELOG.md``in the ``develop branch to “[Unreleased]” and complete headings (as listed below)

  • Notify all the developer a new version is out and that they need to update their branches

Headings for CHANGELOG.md

### Added
### Changed
### Fixed
### Deprecated
### Removed
### Security

Questions to resolve for each merge request

During code review for each merge request, make sure all of the following questions are addresssed. If any boxes are not ticked, there should be a good reason why not.

  • [ ] Are there user-facing tutorials?

    • [ ] what does the feature do? how to use it?

    • [ ] what are the limitations of the feature? what it doesn’t do?

    • [ ] troubleshooting guide: what to do in case of issues/bugs/problems?

    • [ ] FAQ: what are the most common mistakes or confusions?

    • [ ] Is each tutorial minimal and relatively self-contained?

    • [ ] Is each tutorial didactic?

    • [ ] Are all class / method / function / file links in the tutorials working correctly?

  • [ ] Is the developer documentation updated with any new modules or changes?

  • [ ] Are the packages / tutorials integrated into the documentation TOC?

  • [ ] Do all user-facing class attributes have docstrings in __init__()?

  • [ ] Do all non-user-facing class attributes have a leading underscore? (e.g. _attr)

  • [ ] Are all user-facing class attributes either Parameter, State or SimulationParameter objects in __init__()?

  • [ ] Do Rockpool modules obey the standard Rockpool API for evolve()?

  • [ ] as_graph() implemented, if at all possible, for any new modules

  • [ ] Does every __init__.py have an initial docstring block, describing what the package / sub-package does and contains?

  • [ ] Are there tests implemented?

    • [ ] unit tests?

    • [ ] integration tests?

    • [ ] interface tests?

    • [ ] performance tests?

    • [ ] code coverage measured?

  • [ ] Is CHANGELOG.md updated?

    • [ ] Does it contains an one-line description of the functionality?

    • [ ] Does the dev version have been updated?

  • [ ] Is version.py updated and is it matching CHANGELOG.md?

  • [ ] Is the implementation minimal? i.e. the simplest possible way of implementing the functionality