While major releases generally introduce some very substantial change to the application, they are typically treated the same as minor version increments for the purpose of release packaging.
Sometimes it becomes necessary to constrain dependencies to a particular version, e.g. to work around a bug in a newer release or to avoid a breaking change that we have yet to accommodate. (Another common example is to limit the upstream Django release.) For example:
These version constraints are added to `base_requirements.txt` to ensure that newer packages are not installed when updating the pinned dependencies in `requirements.txt` (see the [Update Requirements](#update-requirements) section below). Before each new minor version of NetBox is released, all such constraints on dependent packages should be addressed if feasible. This guards against the collection of stale constraints over time.
Close the [release milestone](https://github.com/netbox-community/netbox/milestones) on GitHub after ensuring there are no remaining open issues associated with it.
Check that a link to the release notes for the new version is present in the navigation menu (defined in `mkdocs.yml`), and that a summary of all major new features has been added to `docs/index.md`.
Follow these instructions to perform a new installation of NetBox in a temporary environment. This process must not be automated: The goal of this step is to catch any errors or omissions in the documentation, and ensure that it is kept up-to-date for each release. Make any necessary changes to the documentation before proceeding with the release.
Submit a pull request to merge the `feature` branch into the `develop` branch in preparation for its release. Once it has been merged, continue with the section for patch releases below.
Before each release, update each of NetBox's Python dependencies to its most recent stable version. These are defined in `requirements.txt`, which is updated from `base_requirements.txt` using `pip`. To do this:
In cases where upgrading a dependency to its most recent release is breaking, it should be constrained to its current minor version in `base_requirements.txt` with an explanatory comment and revisited for the next major NetBox release (see the [Address Constrained Dependencies](#address-constrained-dependencies) section above).
Commit these changes to the `develop` branch and push upstream.
### Verify CI Build Status
Ensure that continuous integration testing on the `develop` branch is completing successfully. If it fails, take action to correct the failure before proceding with the release.
Submit a pull request titled **"Release vX.Y.Z"** to merge the `develop` branch into `master`. Copy the documented release notes into the pull request's body.
