Deploy Process

Merge ticketed PRs that are code approved, passed testing and that have been marked as ready for release

• Make sure the PR is merging into staging branch
• If it's a single commit you can rebase the branch and merge
• If it's multiple commits you can squash the commits and merge
• Always make sure the commit message contains a reference to the ticket number
• Depending on the order of merging and code changes, merge conflicts may appear. Deal with them before merging.
• Each PR will need to be approved by someone other than the creator. Plan accordingly.

Create a release PR

• Once you have merged in all PRs for the release, make a PR from staging into master
• Add a title that includes the sprint number and identifies which branch we are merging into. See previous releases for examples.
• Add a CHANGELOG to the PR description including the ticket numbers with short ticket description. At the end tag @jpyuda. If the list is too long, you can omit the ticket descriptions.
• Approval is not required to merge this PR.
• Make sure that you are using the merge commit method DO NOT use rebase or squash

Monitor the deploy in pages.cloud.gov

After you have merged the release PR in GitHub, launch the page.cloud.gov usagov/vote-gov site and monitor the deploy process. You will be able to see logs if something goes wrong to troubleshoot.

Confirm launch

• Once you have seen the deployment complete successfully you must confirm the launch.
• Execute basic manually scanning of the site for visual and functional issues.
• Confirm each development ticket that is ready for release
  • Test and verify that each ticket was successfully deployed
  • Mark the ticket as done and resolution as done
  • Add a comment "Successfully deployed" with a link to reference and verify the task is complete

Create a official release in Github

After confirming that the deploy was successful you must create a release and release tag to document the release state.

• Visit the releases page https://github.com/usagov/vote-gov/releases and click on the "Draft new release" button.
• The target should be master and you must create a new associated tag
  • The tag name will follow the tag naming conventions
• The release title should match the tag name.
• Use the "generate release notes" button to autopopulate with the commit history changes and add the sprint number above the generated content.
• Ensure the "Set as latest release" is checked then click "Publish release"

Congratulations! This step completes the deploy process for vote.gov.