The Rust Release Process

Here’s how Rust is currently released:

A note about the start-release.py script

Steps of the release process that require interacting with our production environment are executed through the start-release.py script. The script requires you to install programs and configure your local environmet, and it will guide you through the setup.

The first time you run the script (or when the pre-requisites change), you will need to invoke the script multiple times until everything is setup correctly.

start-release.py will always start a CI job in the background. To know when it finishes, you have to watch the logs. WHen the build finishes, a line like this will appear in the logs:

Phase complete: UPLOAD_ARTIFACTS State: SUCCEEDED

Bump the stable version number (Friday the week before)

Open a PR bumping the version number in src/version. r+ rollup=never this PR (self-approve it).

Mark it as rollup=never, because if it lands in a rollup as not the first PR then other pull requests in that rollup will be incorrectly associated with the prior release.

This is effectively when the beta branch forks – when beta is promoted, it will be based off of the PR that landed just before this version number bump PR.

Promote branches (Monday)

Both promotions should happen on Monday. You can open both PRs at the same time, but prioritize landing the stable promotion first (to maximize the pre-release testing period).

Updating the base of the beta and stable branches

Run this command from the rust-lang/release-team repository¹:

./scripts/start-release.py update-rust-branches

Remember that start-release.py starts a job in the background, and the script will exit before the branches are updated. Watch the logs to see when the background job finishes before proceeding.

stable PR

Send a PR to rust-lang/rust targeting the new stable branch making the following changes:

• Update release notes to the latest available copy:

  • If the release notes PR was merged:

    git checkout origin/master -- RELEASES.md
    

  • Otherwise, manually copy RELEASES.md from the pending release notes PR

• Update src/ci/channel to stable

Self-approve the PR with r+ rollup=never p=1000.

Note that we need to merge this PR as soon as possible, to maximise the pre-release testing time. If another PR is being tested by bors, and CI is not going to finish soon (use your judgement here), you can “yield” priority to the stable release PR by going into that PR and typing this comment:

@bors retry
Yield priority to the stable release.

beta PR

Send a PR to rust-lang/rust targeting the new beta branch with these changes:

• Run this command and create a separate commit with just its output:

  ./x.py run replace-version-placeholder
  

• Update src/ci/channel to beta

Self-approve the PR with r+ rollup=never p=10.

Publish the pre-release on the dev-static environment

After the stable PR is merged you’ll need to start the pre-release. Run this command from the rust-lang/release-team repository¹:

./scripts/start-release.py publish-rust-dev-stable YYYY-MM-DD

You need to replace YYYY-MM-DD with the date of the release (Thursday).

Master bootstrap update (Tuesday)

This step can only be done after the new beta has been released. The release process for the beta happens automatically at 00:00 UTC every day, so if the beta PR landed after that you will have to wait another day. You can check whether beta has been released by installing it with rustup.

Send a PR to the master branch to:

• Cherry pick the commit that ran replace-version-placeholder from the now merged beta branch PR. Do not re-run the tool as there might have been other stabilizations on master which were not included in the branched beta, so may not be attributed to the current release.

• Run this to update the bootstrap compiler to the beta you created yesterday:

  ./x.py run src/tools/bump-stage0
  

• Remove references to the bootstrap and not(bootstrap) conditional compilation attributes. You can find all of them by installing ripgrep and running this command:

  rg '#!?\[.*\(bootstrap' -t rust -t toml
  

  The general guidelines (both for #[] and #![]) are:

  • Remove any item annotated with #[cfg(bootstrap)].
  • Remove any #[cfg(not(bootstrap))] attribute while keeping the item.
  • Remove any #[cfg_attr(bootstrap, $attr)] attribute while keeping the item.
  • Replace any #[cfg_attr(not(bootstrap), doc="$doc")] with $doc in the relevant documentation block (or in a new documentation block).
  • Replace any #[cfg_attr(not(bootstrap), $attr)] with #[$attr].

  Note that if a PR adds cfg(bootstrap) and is merged between the beta PR and the master bootstrap update, the rg invocation will show them even though they won’t have to be removed. The easiest way to handle this is to change them anyway and let CI show you the failure.

• Ensure there are no new warnings or Clippy lints affecting the codebase:

  ./x clippy ci
  

Release day (Thursday)

Decide on a time to do the release. You are fully in charge of deciding when the release happens, pick the time that works best for you. The only constraint is, the release process must start and finish within the release day (in UTC).

Let the Social Media coordinator (currently Mara) know of the time, so that she can be ready to post the release on the project’s social media channels.

As of September 2024 a release takes between 75 and 90 minutes to complete, so start the release process earlier enough to hit the time you planned.

To start the release, Run this command in the rust-lang/release-team repository¹:

./scripts/start-release.py publish-rust-prod-stable

The command will start a background job to invoke promote-release targeting the production environment, and it will show the instructions to follow its logs.

When the release process completes, merge the blog post PR and inform Mara to announce the release on social media. Finally, bask in your success 🎉

Beta stage0 update (Friday)

Send a PR to the beta branch updating the stage0 to the stable release you published:

./x run src/tools/bump-stage0

Appendix: Rebuilding stable pre-releases

If something goes wrong and we need to rebuild the stable artifacts, merge the PR on the stable branch of the rust-lang/rust repository. Once the commit is merged, [authenticate with AWS][awscli] and run this command in the rust-lang/release-team repository:

./scripts/start-release.py publish-rust-dev-stable-rebuild

You’ll also want to update the previously published pre-release announcement on the blog and internals with the new information.