Release Process

Releases of base/base are produced through two manual workflows and one automatic trigger:

• Start Release — choose a bump type (major / minor / patch) and the release branch is created automatically.
• Publish Release — choose a version and the final tag, Docker images, and binaries are published.
• Auto-RC — every commit to a releases/v* branch (after the version sync PR is merged) automatically creates an RC tag and builds Docker images and binaries.

Step by step

1. Start a release

Run the Start Release workflow (Actions → Start Release → Run workflow):

• Select the bump type: minor (new feature release), patch (bug fixes), or major (breaking changes).
• The workflow computes the next version from the latest final tag and creates the releases/vX.Y.Z branch.
• For patch bumps, the base is the most recent releases/vX.Y.* branch; for major and minor, the base is main.

Once the branch is created, the Release Version Sync workflow fires automatically and opens a PR to update Cargo.toml to the new version.

2. Merge the version sync PR

Review and merge the auto-generated version sync PR targeting the release branch. Merging unblocks auto-RC creation.

3. Build release candidates (automatic)

Every commit pushed to the release branch triggers the Create RC workflow, which:

• Skips silently if Cargo.toml is still 0.0.0 (the version sync PR has not been merged yet).
• Otherwise creates the next RC tag (for example, v0.6.0-rc.1, v0.6.0-rc.2, …).
• Builds multi-arch Docker images and native binaries.
• Pushes the Docker image tagged with the RC tag only (not latest).

To produce additional RCs, push more commits — bug fixes or backports — to the release branch.

4. Publish the final release

Once you are satisfied with an RC, run the Publish Release workflow (Actions → Publish Release → Run workflow):

• Enter the version number (for example, 0.6.0 — no v prefix, no releases/ prefix).
• The workflow validates that the release branch exists and Cargo.toml is not 0.0.0.
• Creates the final tag vX.Y.Z on the release branch.
• Builds Docker images tagged as vX.Y.Z, X.Y, X, and latest.
• Creates a draft GitHub release with auto-generated changelog and uploads binaries.
• Review and publish the draft release on GitHub.

Auto-RC behavior

The Create RC workflow runs on every push to any releases/v* branch. It is safe to push before the version sync PR is merged — the workflow detects 0.0.0 and skips with a notice rather than failing.

RC tags follow the pattern vX.Y.Z-rc.N, where N increments automatically based on existing tags.

Quick reference

Action	Workflow	Trigger	Output
Create release branch	Start Release	Manual (bump type)	releases/vX.Y.Z branch
Sync Cargo.toml version	Release Version Sync	Automatic on branch creation	PR targeting release branch
Build RC	Create RC	Automatic on push to releases/v*	RC tag + Docker image + binaries
Publish final release	Publish Release	Manual (version number)	Final tag + Docker images + draft GitHub release

Workflows

• Start Release — Creates the release branch from a bump-type dropdown.
• Release Version Sync — Opens a PR to update Cargo.toml when a release branch is created.
• Create RC — Triggered on push to releases/v*; creates RC tags and builds artifacts.
• Build Release — Reusable workflow (called by Create RC and Publish Release) that builds Docker images and binaries.
• Publish Release — Manual workflow to create the final tag and publish the release.