This section documents how we currently release Dangerzone for the different distributions we support.
Here is a list of tasks that should be done before issuing the release:
- Create a new issue named QA and Release for version <VERSION>, to track the general progress.
You can generate its content with the the
poetry run ./dev_scripts/generate-release-tasks.py
command. - Add new Linux platforms and remove obsolete ones
- Bump the Python dependencies using
poetry lock
- Update
version
inpyproject.toml
- Update
share/version.txt
- Update the "Version" field in
install/linux/dangerzone.spec
- Bump the Debian version by adding a new changelog entry in
debian/changelog
- Update screenshot in
README.md
, if necessary - CHANGELOG.md should be updated to include a list of all major changes since the last release
- A draft release should be created. Copy the release notes text from the template at
docs/templates/release-notes
- Do the QA tasks
Our currently supported Linux OSes are Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora (we treat Qubes OS as a special case of Fedora, release-wise). For each of these platforms, we need to check if a new version has been added, or if an existing one is now EOL (https://endoflife.date/ is handy for this purpose).
In case of a new version (beta, RC, or official release):
- Add it in our CI workflows, to test if that version works.
- See
.circleci/config.yml
and.github/workflows/ci.yml
, as well asdev_scripts/env.py
anddev_scripts/qa.py
.
- See
- Do a test of this version locally with
dev_scripts/qa.py
. Focus on the GUI part, since the basic functionality is already tested by our CI workflows. - Add the new version in our
INSTALL.md
document, and drop a line in ourCHANGELOG.md
. - If that version is a new stable release, update the
RELEASE.md
andBUILD.md
files where necessary. - Send a PR with the above changes.
In case of the removal of a version:
- Remove any mention to this version from our repo.
- Consult the previous paragraph, but also
grep
your way around.
- Consult the previous paragraph, but also
- Add a notice in our
CHANGELOG.md
about the version removal.
Parallel to the QA process, the release candidate should be put through the large document tests in a dedicated machine to run overnight.
Follow the instructions in docs/developer/TESTING.md
to run the tests.
These tests will identify any regressions or progression in terms of document coverage.
Once we are confident that the release will be out shortly, and doesn't need any more changes:
-
Create a PGP-signed git tag for the version, e.g., for dangerzone
v0.1.0
:git tag -s v0.1.0 git push origin v0.1.0
Note: release candidates are suffixed by
-rcX
.
Important
Because we don't have reproducible builds yet, building the Dangerzone container image in various platforms would lead to different container image IDs / hashes, due to different timestamps. To avoid this issue, we should build the final container image for x86_64 architectures on one platform, and then copy it to the rest of the platforms, before creating our .deb / .rpm / .msi / app bundles.
Tip
You can automate these steps from your macOS terminal app with:
export APPLE_ID=<email>
make build-macos-intel # for Intel macOS
make build-macos-arm # for Apple Silicon macOS
The following needs to happen for both Silicon and Intel chipsets.
- Build machine must have:
- Apple-trusted
Developer ID Application: Freedom of the Press Foundation (94ZZGGGJ3W)
code-signing certificates installed
- Apple-trusted
- Apple account must have:
- A valid application password for
notarytool
in the Keychain. You can verify this by running:xcrun notarytool history --apple-id "<email>" --keychain-profile "dz-notarytool-release-key"
. If you don't find it, you can add it to the Keychain by runningxcrun notarytool store-credentials dz-notarytool-release-key --apple-id <email> --team-id <team ID>
with the respectiveemail
andteam ID
(the latter can be obtained here) - Agreed to any new terms and conditions. You can find those if you visit https://developer.apple.com and login with the proper Apple ID.
- A valid application password for
Here is what you need to do:
-
Verify and install the latest supported Python version from python.org (do not use the one from brew as it is known to cause issues)
-
Checkout the dependencies, and clean your local copy:
# In case of a new Python installation or minor version upgrade, e.g., from # 3.11 to 3.12, reinstall Poetry python3 -m pip install poetry # You can verify the correct Python version is used poetry debug info # Replace with the actual version export DZ_VERSION=$(cat share/version.txt) # Verify and checkout the git tag for this release: git checkout -f v$VERSION # Clean the git repository git clean -df # Clean up the environment poetry env remove --all # Install the dependencies poetry install --sync
-
Build the container image and the OCR language data
poetry run ./install/common/build-image.py poetry run ./install/common/download-tessdata.py # Copy the container image to the assets folder cp share/container.tar.gz ~dz/release-assets/$VERSION/dangerzone-$VERSION-arm64.tar.gz cp share/image-id.txt ~dz/release-assets/$VERSION/.
-
Build the app bundle
poetry run ./install/macos/build-app.py
-
Sign the application bundle, and notarize it
You need to run this command as the account that has access to the code signing certificate
This command assumes that you have created, and stored in the Keychain, an application password associated with your Apple Developer ID, which will be used specifically for
notarytool
.# Sign the .App and make it a .dmg poetry run ./install/macos/build-app.py --only-codesign # Notarize it. You must run this command from the MacOS UI # from a terminal application. xcrun notarytool submit ./dist/Dangerzone.dmg --apple-id $APPLE_ID --keychain-profile "dz-notarytool-release-key" --wait && xcrun stapler staple dist/Dangerzone.dmg # Copy the .dmg to the assets folder ARCH=$(uname -m) if [ "$ARCH" = "x86_64" ]; then ARCH="i686" fi cp dist/Dangerzone.dmg ~dz/release-assets/$VERSION/Dangerzone-$VERSION-$ARCH.dmg
The Windows release is performed in a Windows 11 virtual machine (as opposed to a physical one).
- Download a VirtualBox VM image for Windows from here: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virtual-machines/ and import it into VirtualBox. Also install the Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack.
- Install updates
- Install git for Windows from https://git-scm.com/download/win, and clone the dangerzone repo
- Follow the Windows build instructions in
BUILD.md
, except:- Don't install Docker Desktop (it won't work without nested virtualization)
- Install the Windows SDK from here: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/windows-sdk/ and add
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\ClickOnce\SignTool
to the path (you'll need it forsigntool.exe
) - You'll also need the Windows codesigning certificate installed on the VM
-
Checkout the dependencies, and clean your local copy:
# In case of a new Python installation or minor version upgrade, e.g., from # 3.11 to 3.12, reinstall Poetry python3 -m pip install poetry # You can verify the correct Python version is used poetry debug info # Replace with the actual version export DZ_VERSION=$(cat share/version.txt) # Verify and checkout the git tag for this release: git checkout -f v$VERSION # Clean the git repository git clean -df # Clean up the environment poetry env remove --all # Install the dependencies poetry install --sync
-
Copy the container image into the VM
[!IMPORTANT] Instead of running
python .\install\windows\build-image.py
in the VM, run the build image script on the host (making sure to build forlinux/amd64
). Copyshare/container.tar.gz
andshare/image-id.txt
from the host into theshare
folder in the VM. -
Run
poetry run .\install\windows\build-app.bat
-
When you're done you will have
dist\Dangerzone.msi
Rename Dangerzone.msi
to Dangerzone-$VERSION.msi
.
Tip
You can automate these steps from any Linux distribution with:
make build-linux
You can then add the created artifacts to the appropriate APT/YUM repo.
Below we explain how we build packages for each Linux distribution we support.
Because the Debian packages do not contain compiled Python code for a specific Python version, we can create a single Debian package and use it for all of our Debian-based distros.
Create a Debian Bookworm development environment. You can follow the instructions in our build section, or create your own locally with:
# Create and run debian bookworm development environment
./dev_scripts/env.py --distro debian --version bookworm build-dev
./dev_scripts/env.py --distro debian --version bookworm run --dev bash
# Build the latest container
./dev_scripts/env.py --distro debian --version bookworm run --dev bash -c "cd dangerzone && poetry run ./install/common/build-image.py"
# Create a .deb
./dev_scripts/env.py --distro debian --version bookworm run --dev bash -c "cd dangerzone && ./install/linux/build-deb.py"
Publish the .deb under ./deb_dist
to the
freedomofpress/apt-tools-prod
repo, by sending a PR. Follow the instructions in that repo on how to do so.
NOTE: This procedure will have to be done for every supported Fedora version.
In this section, we'll use Fedora 41 as an example.
Create a Fedora development environment. You can follow the instructions in our build section, or create your own locally with:
./dev_scripts/env.py --distro fedora --version 41 build-dev
# Build the latest container (skip if already built):
./dev_scripts/env.py --distro fedora --version 41 run --dev bash -c "cd dangerzone && poetry run ./install/common/build-image.py"
# Create a .rpm:
./dev_scripts/env.py --distro fedora --version 41 run --dev bash -c "cd dangerzone && ./install/linux/build-rpm.py"
Publish the .rpm under ./dist
to the
freedomofpress/yum-tools-prod
repo, by sending a PR. Follow the instructions in that repo on how to do so.
Create a .rpm for Qubes:
./dev_scripts/env.py --distro fedora --version 41 run --dev bash -c "cd dangerzone && ./install/linux/build-rpm.py --qubes"
and similarly publish it to the freedomofpress/yum-tools-prod
repo.
To publish the release, you can follow these steps:
-
Create an archive of the Dangerzone source in
tar.gz
format:export VERSION=$(cat share/version.txt) git archive --format=tar.gz -o dangerzone-${VERSION:?}.tar.gz --prefix=dangerzone/ v${VERSION:?}
-
Run container scan on the produced container images (some time may have passed since the artifacts were built)
gunzip --keep -c ./share/container.tar.gz > /tmp/container.tar docker pull anchore/grype:latest docker run --rm -v /tmp/container.tar:/container.tar anchore/grype:latest /container.tar
-
Collect the assets in a single directory, calculate their SHA-256 hashes, and sign them. There is an
./dev_scripts/sign-assets.py
script to automate this task.Important: Before running the script, make sure that it's the same container images as the ones that are shipped in other platforms (see our Pre-release section)
# Sign all the assets ./dev_scripts/sign-assets.py ~/release-assets/$VERSION/github --version $VERSION
-
Upload all the assets to the draft release on GitHub.
find ~/release-assets/$VERSION/github | xargs -n1 ./dev_scripts/upload-asset.py --token ~/token --draft
-
Update the Dangerzone website to link to the new installers.
-
Update the brew cask release of Dangerzone with a PR like this one
-
Update version and download links in
README.md
- Toot release announcement on our mastodon account @[email protected]
- Extend the
check_repos.yml
CI test for the newly added platforms