Release preparation

Checklist of steps to follow when preparing a new release of the DITA-OT documentation on the project website: www.dita-ot.org.

After the release is finalized in the core repository:

1. Manually run the GitHub Action to update the HTML documents in the release subdirectory.

   

   • The GitHub workflow will automatically build the docs for the selected tag with the specified DITA-OT version using the workflow file from the selected branch of the docs repository (typically master).
   • When the workflow is finished, it will create a pull request in the dita-ot/website repo with the new files in a version-specific subfolder and a release branch corresponding to the selected tag.
   • We'll use this new release branch for the next steps, so you may want to set the PR to the draft state to make sure it isn't merged until the steps below are complete.

2. Check out the new release branch from the workflow-generated PR to your local clone for the next steps.

3. Increment version numbers in configuration file _config.yml

   • {{site.release}} → 4.0
   • {{site.version}} → 4.0.x
     For 2-digit (non-maintenance) releases, set {{site.version}} = {{site.release}}.

4. Update release date in download.html (hero unit at the top of the page).

5. Add link to previous maintenance release in download.html.

   (Be sure to preserve the list-group-item-light class on the latest patch in each column.)

6. Update menu logic in _layouts/base.html & _includes/docs-menu.html.

   (Be sure to increment the number on the current version item with the active class: ✔ Release 4.0)

7. Push your changes to the release branch and verify the results in the Netlify deploy preview.

8. Merge the pull request to publish the changes to the project website.

9. For each minor version, bump list of DITA-OT versions in registry version selector
   (See https://github.com/dita-ot/website/pull/768 for sample changes.)