Release Process

Introduction

Creating a Dolphin Release does require some steps, but if you know what to do it's fairly straightforward.

Releases are versioned as follows: YYMM, where YY is the current year, and MM is the current month. If creating a hotfix release, a letter is appended to the end of the version number. For example, 2407a would be the first hotfix for a release made in July 2024.

Releases can only be created by core developers.

Details

1. Perform a translation sync with Transifex if creating a major release.
2. Create a new branch named release-prep-xxxx, where xxxx is the version number: git checkout -b release-prep-xxxx <commit or tag>
   • If creating a major release, use the commit that the release should be based on.
   • If creating a hotfix release, use the tag of the last release.
3. Cherry pick any necessary commits.
4. Update DOLPHIN_VERSION_MAJOR and DOLPHIN_VERSION_MINOR in CMake/ScmRevGen.cmake, and commit the result.
5. Push the branch to GitHub: git push -u origin release-prep-xxxx.
6. Smoke test the produced builds.
   • The builds can be downloaded at https://dolphin-emu.org/download/list/release-prep-xxxx/1/.
   • Now is the time to fix any last-minute issues. Additional builds can be created by pushing new commits to GitHub.
7. Create an annotated tag: git tag -a xxxx -m "Release for some date"
8. Push the tag to GitHub: git push origin xxxx.
9. The release builds will automatically show up on the normal download page.
10. Publish the corresponding Progress Report, if any.
    • After publishing, post the link to the Progress Report onto Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, etc.
11. Merge the release branch back into master: git checkout master, git merge --no-ff xxxx