Release 11.11.0-rc2

Preparation

• If we are NOT in Feature Freeze, one can ignore and close the Preparation MRs

• Perform automated merging into the preparation branches:

  # In Slack
  /chatops run release merge 11.11.0-rc2

• Ensure the CE preparation MR has been fully merged into the EE counterpart

• Merge the preparation branches

• For omnibus-gitlab cherry-pick remaining merge requests directly into CE stable branch. Then, merge the CE Omnibus stable branch into EE.

• Check the following list of critical issues/MRs which are to be included in 11.11.0-rc2. Ensure each has made both CE and EE:

  • REFERENCE_TO_MR_TO_PICK

• Ensure builds are green on Omnibus CE stable branch and Omnibus EE stable branch

Packaging

• Sync stable branches to dev

  • CE
  • EE
  • Omnibus CE branch
  • Omnibus EE branch

• Tag 11.11.0-rc2:

  # In Slack:
  /chatops run release tag 11.11.0-rc2

• Check progress of EE packages build and CE packages build

  • This might take a while (around 80 min).
  • We only need the EE packages to finish to continue with next steps.

Deploy

Deploys to production require confirmation from a production team member before proceeding. Use /chatops run oncall prod in the #production channel to find who's on call and ping someone. Deploys to staging or canary can be done at will, just mention it in the #production channel.

staging.gitlab.com

• Staging deploys via the deployer pipeline happen automatically as soon as the EE packages build reaches the gitlab_com:upload_deploy stage of the pipeline.

QA

• Create a "QA Task" issue using the ChatOps command:

  # In Slack, replacing LAST_DEPLOYED_VERSION with the appropriate value:
  /chatops run release qa vLAST_DEPLOYED_VERSION v11.11.0-rc2

gitlab.com canary stage

• Notify #production that you're about to deploy on canary

• Deploy 11.11.0-rc2 to the canary VMs on gitlab.com

  # In Slack:
  /chatops run deploy 11.11.0-rc2.ee.0 --production --canary

• Link to deployment job (even failed attempts) => https://ops.gitlab.net/gitlab-com/gl-infra/deployer/pipelines/52682

• Confirm that there are no errors on canary

  • canary errors on sentry.gitlab.net
  • canary dashboard

If there are issues on canary you should immediately stop sending traffic to it by issuing the following chatops command:

/chatops run canary --drain --production

gitlab.com main stage (production)

• Wait for the QA Task deadline to pass before deploying to the rest of gitlab.com

• Get confirmation from a production team member to deploy production. If someone besides the oncall confirms, @mention the oncall so they are aware.

• Confirm there are no critical alerts on gitlab.com on the alerting dashboard

• Deploy 11.11.0-rc2 to GitLab.com

  # In Slack:
  /chatops run deploy 11.11.0-rc2.ee.0 --production

• Link to deployment job (even failed attempts) =>

Release

• Publish the packages via ChatOps:

  # In Slack:
  /chatops run publish 11.11.0-rc2

• Verify that packages appear on packages.gitlab.com

• Verify that Docker images appear on hub.docker.com: EE / CE

• Post a tweet about the 11.11.0-rc2 release in the #releases channel:

  !tweet "GitLab 11.11.0-rc2 is available: https://packages.gitlab.com/gitlab/unstable
  This is a release candidate, we'll release 11.11 on the 22nd of this month."