Release Process

This document describes the process for releasing a new version of the project.

Docs

The docs are automatically published whenever a PR updates the docs and the PR is merged into the main branch. The docs are published to the gh-pages branch, which is the source for the Github Pages site.

Docker images

The Docker image latest tag always points to the latest released version. The main tag points to the latest commit on the main branch.

If you push a tag vX.Y.Z to the repository, the Docker image with the tag vX.Y.Z is built and pushed to Docker Hub. Afterwards, the latest tag is updated to point to the new version.

Helm Chart

The Helm chart only gets released when a git tag is pushed to the repository with the format helm-v*.

The appVersion in the Helm chart does not have to point to the latest released version. This allows us to first publish a new version of the Docker image without updating the Helm chart. The Helm chart is updated when we are ready to release a new version.

This is important when a new appVersion isn't compatible with the current Helm chart. In those cases, we can first merge the PR, thoroughly test, release new container image, and then in a separate PR update the Helm chart and the appVersion.