Automate releases

[tmeasday]

Following up on the documented release process, we should fully automate package releases, in concert with Versioned Documentation.

In line with the above, we should do the following:

1. Merge bugfixes / documentation improvements / etc directly to master. This should:

• Run CI, obviously
• If CI passes, publish a new PATCH version of changed packages via lerna on the CI server.
• Update the x.y documentation in place.
• Add an entry to the changelog

2. Merge new features to the release/x.y branch. This should:

• Run CI, again.
• If CI passes, publish a new x.y-canary release of changed packages, via lerna
• Update the x.y preview documentation in place (or create it if this is the first commit to the branch).
• Add an entry to the changelog

3. Run minor releases via merging release/x.y to master. This should:

• I guess run CI, just to be sure ;)
• Publish x.y versions for real, via lerna
• Change the x.y documentation to be the latest, update all <x.y documentations to point to it and list it in their menus. Update x.y-1 documentation to be "out-of-date".
• Update the changelog with a release date, etc.

I think we can do all of that fairly easily, most of the pieces are in place now. It'll be fun!

[danielduan]

I think batched updates would be beneficial. Instead of every change merged to master, we can set to release patch updates something like twice a week.

[stale]

Hi everyone! Seems like there hasn't been much going on in this issue lately. If there are still questions, comments, or bugs, please feel free to continue the discussion. Unfortunately, we don't have time to get to every issue. We are always open to contributions so please send us a pull request if you would like to help. Inactive issues will be closed after 60 days. Thanks!

[danielduan]

I'm gonna close this issue since the current process seems to work more or less. We can reopen this if needed.