Cabal/cabal-install 3.16.0.0 release checklist

[ffaf1]

Release manager: @ulysses4ever

Regressions

• List all open regressions (in master and 3.14), most likely.
  • cabal-install-3.12.1.0 works, later versions don't - for project using libncursesw #10961
  • curl error with cabal upload -d (regression in 3.14) #10920
  • New git invocation changes the behaviour of source-repository-package #10605
  • cabal-install seems to pass new implicit flags to the compiler by default, which breaks doctest. #10915

PRs of interest

• REPL command in project requires a target #10684
• Replace cabal project parsing with Parsec #8889 probably bumped to 3.18
• Pass *-options and -pgmc gcc to GHC when compiling ordinary Haskell sources #10969
• Add --with-repl flag to modify program the "repl" starts with #10996 --with-repl stuff is high priority IMO (Artem)

GHC concerns

• Ask GHC devs what the name of the new release is, and if they plan to further add extensions or flags. @ffaf1
  (done: Benjamin Gamari replied: “The next major series will be 9.14. We do not plan on adding any additional extensions. I believe the same is true of flags.”)

Release checklist

• Create a release checklist ticket @ffaf1 done!

A.1 Before the release

• Pre-flight Checks: See Preflight checks @ffaf1 Preflight checks for 3.16 #11011
• Changelog generation: See CHANGELOGS @ffaf1 Add 3.16 changelogs #11033
• Bump version numbers: See Bumping version numbers
  • SPDX @geekosaur add SPDX license data version 3.26 #11014
  • hackage-security @geekosaur update Cabal-syntax bound to permit 3.16 hackage-security#327
  • update max ghc version @geekosaur update max supported ghc to <9.16 #11016
  • re-pin index state and re-test with new hackage-security @geekosaur bump index state to get new hackage-security #11024
  • bump copyrights @geekosaur bump copyright years #11021
  • bump versions
    • master (3.17) @geekosaur bump versions (master) #11022
    • 3.16 "un-bump" @geekosaur adjust versions for 3.16.0.0 release #11037
• Add ghc 9.14 to validate and bootstrap (waiting on it to be added upstream)
• Tag the release: See Tagging the release
• Upload release candidates: See Uploading package release candidates to Hackage
• Publish artifacts: See Publishing the artifacts
• Publish everything else: See Publishing everything else
• Tweak things as needed, merge patches to fix regressions
• Re-upload the candidates on Hackage based on the latest tag, and publish them

A.2 After the release

• prepare a list of contributors for the release, e.g., git log --use-mailmap --pretty=format:%an Cabal-v3.6.1.0...Cabal-v3.8.1.0 | sort -u and don't forget to mention "reviewers, QA testers, devops and others"
• advertise on discourse, haskell-cafe and cabal-devel and in particular, mention:
  • How to install using ghcup
  • Changelogs
  • Fixed regression compared to the previous version
  • Regressions still unfixed
  • How great our community is and how we love and cherish collaborators
• ask kind souls to cross-post to Mastodon, Matrix (#haskell-tooling and #haskell-language-server), Discord, Twitter, Reddit. Copy the links to #hackage so that others can upvote
• Move the tickets that haven't made it to the release to the next one.
• party 🥳

[ulysses4ever]

we're skipping things that require a release branch to win some us time to merge some remaining PRs before the cut. E.g. C.2.

Currently at C.3.

Adding GHC 9.14 to CI (C.3.3) isn't easily possible yet because there's not even an official branch, there's a wip-branch in https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/merge_requests/14404 Same issue with bootstrap, c.3.5.

I propose to try finishing C.3 as much as possible without C.3.3 and add the remaining items on the checklist in OP.

[ulysses4ever]

I added a "PRs of interest" section in the OP where I list PRs that would be good to get into 3.16. Not all of that may happen but it's good to have a target. I used the 3.16 Milestone to collect those.

[geekosaur]

So we have two meta issues that are worked around for the time being but should be resolved properly for 3.18 if we can't get them figured out in time for 3.16:

• splitmix-0.1.3 references a symbol on Macs that GitHub's runners say doesn't exist
• the custom Setup for cabal-testsuite doesn't work with 3.14.1.1 and needs to be modified as per Make Cabal agnostic about working directory #9718

I've pinged the relevant people about both.