prepare-release

name

prepare-release

description

Prepare, cut and publish a TeamPass release following the 3.2.1.x model — scope the commit range, decide the version number, run the release gate, bump the version constants, refresh the Docker image (version arg and base image), regenerate the integrity checksums, finish git flow manually, and draft the GitHub release notes. Use when asked to prepare a release, cut a version, bump TP_VERSION_MINOR, or publish release notes.

Prepare a TeamPass release

Drives a release from develop to a tagged, published version, reproducing exactly what was done for 3.2.1.0 → 3.2.1.3.

Two irreversible, outward-facing steps require explicit user confirmation before running: pushing master/develop/the tag, and publishing the GitHub release. Everything before that is local and reversible. Never run those two without an explicit go-ahead.

---

0. Inputs to establish first

Ask only if they cannot be derived:

Input	How to derive
Base ref	git describe --tags --abbrev=0 develop — the previous release tag
Target version	See §2 (patch vs minor decision)
Pre-release?	A .0 opening a new line is usually published as Pre-release (3.2.1.0 was); ask

Everything runs from the repository root. Start from an up-to-date develop:

git checkout develop
git status --short          # must be clean
git rev-parse --short HEAD

---

1. Scope the release

BASE=$(git describe --tags --abbrev=0 develop)
git rev-list --format='%h %ci %s' --no-merges "$BASE"..develop | grep -v '^commit'
git diff --stat "$BASE"..develop | tail -1

rtk gotcha: the rtk hook linearizes git log and hides merge commits. Use git rev-list --merges --format='%h %s', git rev-parse HEAD and git show -s --format='%h %s' whenever the merge structure matters.

Classify every commit into the release-note buckets (§8): security fix / new feature / improvement / bug fix. Commits titled Updated languages strings and pure test commits are not release-note material on their own — fold them into the feature they belong to.

Then detect the two things that drive the rest of the procedure:

# (a) Schema / installer changes → decides UPGRADE_MIN_DATE and the upgrade-script work
git diff --stat "$BASE"..develop -- public/install/

# (b) Composer dependency changes → decides whether LICENSE_COMPLIANCE_REPORT.md is regenerated
git diff --stat "$BASE"..develop -- composer.json composer.lock

---

2. Decide the version number

Version constants live in app/config/include.php:29-31:

define('TP_VERSION', '3.2.1');            // major.minor.patch — the "line"
define("UPGRADE_MIN_DATE", "1785099115"); // upgrade-wizard trigger, see §4
define('TP_VERSION_MINOR', '3');          // 4th digit — the patch on that line

The published version is TP_VERSION . '.' . TP_VERSION_MINOR.

Patch release on the current line (the common case — 3.2.1.1, .2, .3): bump TP_VERSION_MINOR only. Any DDL is appended to the existing public/install/upgrade_run_<TP_VERSION>.php — no new script, no TP_VERSION bump. This works because every upgrade script is replayed on every upgrade run (see §3).

New line (3.2.1 → 3.2.2): bump TP_VERSION, reset TP_VERSION_MINOR to 0, and:

1. create public/install/upgrade_run_<new TP_VERSION>.php, modelled on upgrade_run_3.2.1.php;
2. append it to $scripts_list in public/install/upgrade_scripts_manager.php (flat ordered array, appended at the end, never reordered);
3. seed every new admin setting / table in public/install/install-steps/run.step5.php so fresh installs match, and register each new CREATE TABLE method as an action in public/install/install-steps/install.js.

Checks 8 and 9 of the release gate (§3) verify points 3 automatically.

---

3. Run the release gate

scripts/release_check.sh "$BASE"

Ten checks: version constants, PHPStan (level from phpstan.neon), PHPUnit, PHP lint on changed files, shell lint, debug-leftover scan on added lines, EN/FR language parity, installer-vs-upgrade admin-setting seed parity, installer CREATE TABLE → install.js registration, and shipped-autoloader integrity (every file required by app/vendor/composer/autoload_files.php must be in the archive, or it fatals on every request — added when 3.2.1.7 was found to carry that break). Check 10 reads the committed copies, not the working tree, so a local composer install does not disturb it and the gate runs green in the normal dev state. Exit code is non-zero on any failure; warnings never fail the run.

Failures block the release. Warnings are triaged, not ignored — each one is either fixed or explicitly justified to the user.

Binaries (Composer vendor dir is app/vendor, and app/vendor/bin/phpunit is not executable):

php app/vendor/bin/phpstan analyse --no-progress --memory-limit=1G
php app/vendor/phpunit/phpunit/phpunit --no-coverage

Manual checks the gate does not cover — run them when the range touches the matching area:

• Encryption paths: every new sharekey read uses decryptUserObjectKeyWithMigration() (with increment_id selected for sharekeys_fields); custom fields encrypt before INSERT.

• Dual-location classes: every teampassclasses package edited in app/includes/libraries/teampassclasses/ must be identical in app/vendor/teampassclasses/ — only the vendor/ copy is autoloaded. Sentinel tests: tests/Unit/CryptoManagerCopiesInSyncTest.php, tests/Unit/LdapExtraCopiesInSyncTest.php.

• Proxy shims: every new app/sources/*.queries.php has a matching public/sources/*.queries.php shim (a missing shim surfaces as a misleading 403 Access Forbidden by CSRFProtector).

• Idempotency of the upgrade script if DDL was added (§4).

• Docker image freshness. The image ships an OS, so it ages on its own even when no code changed, and Trivy publishes the result as GitHub code-scanning alerts. Check both FROM lines of Dockerfile:

  grep -n '^FROM' Dockerfile
  # Is the pinned Alpine still supported? Compare against the published tags:
  curl -sS 'https://hub.docker.com/v2/repositories/library/php/tags/?page_size=100&name=fpm-alpine' -o /tmp/php-tags.json
  php -r '$d=json_decode(file_get_contents("/tmp/php-tags.json"),true); foreach($d["results"] as $t) echo $t["name"]," ",substr($t["last_updated"],0,10),"\n";'
  

  An Alpine version that no longer appears in the recently-updated tags is end of life: its packages get no more security fixes, so every CVE Trivy reports on them is unfixable until the base image moves. Bump the Alpine part and keep the PHP minor, unless the user decides to move PHP too. Verify each apk add package still exists in the target release before trusting the bump — a missing or split package is the usual breakage:

  curl -sS "https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v<TARGET>/main/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz" -o /tmp/idx.tar.gz
  tar xzf /tmp/idx.tar.gz -O APKINDEX | grep -x 'P:<package>'
  

If dependencies changed (§1b), regenerate the licence report and commit it with the release:

php app/vendor/bin/composer-license-checker

---

4. Decide UPGRADE_MIN_DATE

upgradeRequired() (app/sources/main.functions.php) compares the DB upgrade_timestamp against this constant and sends the whole installation through the upgrade wizard when it is lower.

Bump it only when the release carries a DB schema change or a data migration. A code-only release keeps the previous value — 3.2.0.9 and 3.2.1.3 both did, deliberately, so installations already on the previous patch are not sent back through the wizard.

When it is bumped, the value is the epoch of the release moment:

date +%s

Every upgrade_run_*.php is replayed on every upgrade, from index 0. Nothing compares the installed version — upgrade_scripts_manager.php hands out $scripts_list entries by index and the client walks them all. So any DDL you add must be idempotent: CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS, addColumnIfNotExist(), checkIndexExist($table,$index,$sql) (both in public/install/tp.functions.php), INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE. Precedent to copy: upgrade_run_3.2.0.php (guarded de-duplication + unique index).

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5. Create the release branch and the bump commit

git checkout develop
git flow release start <VERSION>          # creates release/<VERSION>

If git flow AVH refuses (a stale release/* branch already exists), either delete the stale branch or create the branch by hand: git checkout -b release/<VERSION> develop, and finish manually as in §7 — the manual sequence is byte-identical to what git flow produces.

Edit app/config/include.php and Dockerfile, then commit both together. Use the historical message forms:

Situation	Commit message
Patch, code only	Bump version to <VERSION>
Patch + schema change	Bump version to <VERSION> and raise UPGRADE_MIN_DATE
UPGRADE_MIN_DATE alone	Bump UPGRADE_MIN_DATE for <VERSION> schema change

The Dockerfile carries ARG TEAMPASS_VERSION, whose default must equal TP_VERSION.TP_VERSION_MINOR. CI overrides it (docker-publish.yml passes TEAMPASS_VERSION=${{ github.ref_name }}), so the default only serves local builds — but a stale value mislabels every image built by hand, which is how it silently drifted six releases behind. §3 compares the two and fails on a mismatch.

git add app/config/include.php Dockerfile
git commit -m "Bump version to <VERSION>"

composer.json carries a version field that has not been maintained since 3.2.0. That one is genuinely not part of the procedure — leave it alone unless the user asks.

---

6. Regenerate the integrity checksums — always last

The application's verifyFileHashes() / filesIntegrityCheck() (app/sources/admin.queries.php) read app/files_reference.txt, while the root files_reference.txt is the canonical generated file. Both must be identical and both are committed.

Run this after every other commit of the release, otherwise the hashes are stale:

.claude/skills/prepare-release/scripts/regenerate_checksums.sh
git add files_reference.txt app/files_reference.txt
git commit -m "Regenerate file integrity checksums for <VERSION>"

The script regenerates the root file from git ls-files (format <path> <md5>, ~15 000 entries, self-excluded) and copies it over app/files_reference.txt.

The working tree must be clean. A tracked file missing from disk is skipped, producing a reference file with holes. The classic case: the app's post-install cleanup renames public/install/ to public/install1/, which makes 68 tracked installer files look deleted. The script refuses to run in that state — restore the files (git checkout -- public/install) before regenerating.

Why a script: the pipeline is multi-line and gets mangled when passed inline to bash -c (syntax error on the done \ continuation). Never inline it.

Known benign quirk: the root file lists app/files_reference.txt with its pre-copy hash, so the admin integrity screen reports at most two "mismatch" lines for the two reference files themselves. Pre-existing and harmless — do not try to fix it by reordering.

---

7. Finish git flow — manual sequence

Run each git command on its own line; chained && / backslash-continued commands get mangled by the rtk hook.

Before checking out master, check whether the range untracks anything that is still on disk. A commit that removes a path from the index (making it untracked and .gitignored on develop) leaves the files in place there — but master still tracks them, and git silently adopts an untracked file whose content matches the target version. The merge then applies the deletion and wipes the files from disk:

git diff --name-status --diff-filter=D "$BASE"..develop

For every D path still present on disk, note it now — the merge will delete it. Restore it afterwards with git archive <commit-before-the-deletion> <path>/ | tar -x, which writes to disk without touching the index, so a .gitignored directory stays untracked. git checkout <commit> -- <path> would re-stage the files and silently undo the untracking. (Hit on 3.2.1.4: the .claude/ directory, untracked earlier on develop, vanished mid-release.)

Since 3.2.1.7 this fires on app/vendor every single time. Commit c018a28a2 untracked 1940 files of Composer dev dependencies, so the merge into master deletes them from disk. Do not restore them with git archive — they are Composer's to manage, and the git copy is the stale one. Run this after the merge instead:

rm -rf app/vendor/phpstan app/vendor/phpunit app/vendor/symfony/cache
composer install
php app/vendor/phpunit/phpunit/phpunit          # expect: OK (1344 tests, 38419 assertions)
php app/vendor/bin/phpstan analyse --memory-limit=2G
git checkout -- app/vendor/composer/            # LAST — see below, it disarms the toolchain

The rm -rf is not optional, and it is the part nobody guesses. Those three packages keep untracked generated files that git has no reason to delete — phpstan/phpstan/turbo-ext/ (28 native .so binaries), the generated Redis proxies under symfony/cache/Traits/, and the three Xdebug* files that the committed vendor tree never contained. Their directory therefore survives the deletion, and Composer — which only checks that a package directory exists, never what is inside it — considers them installed and skips them. Symptom: composer install aborts with Could not scan for classes inside ".../symfony/cache/Traits/ValueWrapper.php" which does not appear to be a file nor a folder, leaving the autoloader ungenerated. Deleting a directory that happens to be already gone costs nothing; missing one breaks the whole install.

The order of those last three lines is not free, and it changed in 3.2.1.7. The committed app/vendor/composer/ is now the production autoloader (composer install --no-dev), because the archive is built from the index and must not require dev files it does not carry — see check 10 of the release gate. composer install rewrites those seven tracked files into their dev form, which is what makes PHPUnit and PHPStan runnable at all; git checkout -- app/vendor/composer/ puts the production form back. So run the toolchain between the two, never after: with the production autoloader on disk, php app/vendor/phpunit/phpunit/phpunit dies with Class "PHPUnit\TextUI\Application" not found even though the package sits right there.

That git checkout is still mandatory before committing anything or regenerating the checksums — committing the dev autoloader is exactly the bug 3.2.1.7 had to fix, and it fatals every installation. The same rule holds outside a release: to run the suite locally, composer install first, and restore app/vendor/composer/ before you commit.

git checkout master
GIT_MERGE_AUTOEDIT=no git merge --no-ff release/<VERSION> -m "Merge branch 'release/<VERSION>'"
git tag -a <VERSION> -m "<VERSION>"
git checkout develop
git merge --no-ff <VERSION> -m "Merge tag '<VERSION>' into develop"
git branch -d release/<VERSION>

Verify the structure before pushing (remember: rtk hides merges):

git rev-list --merges --max-count=3 --format='%h %ci %s' master | grep -v '^commit'
git rev-list --merges --max-count=3 --format='%h %s' develop | grep -v '^commit'
git cat-file -t <VERSION>          # must print "tag" (annotated)
git show <VERSION>:app/config/include.php | grep TP_VERSION

STOP — ask the user before pushing. Every one of the three pushes below triggers the Docker build workflow: .github/workflows/docker-publish.yml fires on push to master and develop, on tags matching *.*.*.* / v*.*.*, on release: published, and on workflow_dispatch. Each run publishes to Docker Hub and GHCR (push: is true for every event except pull_request), so this is not a dry run.

git push origin master
git push origin develop
git push origin <VERSION>

---

8. Draft the GitHub release notes

Read references/release-notes-template.md for the full skeleton and the boilerplate footer, then write the notes to a scratch file and review them with the user before publishing.

Writing rules distilled from the 3.2.1.x releases:

• Opening paragraph states what kind of release this is, what it fixes, and who should upgrade. If there is no schema change, say so explicitly and in bold, together with the UPGRADE_MIN_DATE consequence ("installations already running X are not sent back through the upgrade wizard").
• One bullet per change, written for an administrator, not for a developer. Each bullet opens with a bolded outcome, then explains the cause and the observable effect. Cite the issue/PR number and the contributor handle when there is one: (PR [#5307](https://github.com/nilsteampassnet/TeamPass/pull/5307), @guerricv).
• Sections are adaptive. The usual set is 🔒 Security fixes, ✨ New features, 🛠️ Improvements, 🐛 Bug fixes, ⬆️ Upgrade notes. Drop empty ones; add a themed one when a single subject dominates (3.2.1.1 had 🔐 Encryption hardening).
• ⬆️ Upgrade notes is mandatory whenever behaviour changes for an existing installation: schema/no-schema statement, defaults that shift existing counters, settings seeded on fresh installs only, anything an admin must re-check after upgrading, and the standing "Back up your database before upgrading, as always."
• Close with the compare link: **Full Changelog**: [<BASE>...<VERSION>](https://github.com/nilsteampassnet/TeamPass/compare/<BASE>...<VERSION>) followed by the constant boilerplate from the template.

STOP — ask the user before publishing.

gh release create <VERSION> \
  --repo nilsteampassnet/TeamPass \
  --title "<VERSION>" \
  --notes-file <scratch>/release-notes-<VERSION>.md
# add --prerelease for a .0 opening a new line

---

9. After publishing

• docker-publish.yml (push to master/develop, tags, release, manual dispatch) and docker-image.yml (release published) build and push the images. Check both runs: gh run list --repo nilsteampassnet/TeamPass --limit 5.

• Confirm the release is visible and correctly flagged: gh release view <VERSION> --repo nilsteampassnet/TeamPass --json name,isPrerelease.

• Read the Trivy outcome. docker-publish.yml scans the freshly built image and uploads the result as GitHub code-scanning alerts (github/codeql-action/upload-sarif), so that feed is where the image's CVEs land — it is not CodeQL, and no paths-ignore affects it. This is the only place the base-image work of §3 is actually confirmed:

  gh api 'repos/nilsteampassnet/TeamPass/code-scanning/alerts?per_page=100&state=open' \
    --jq 'group_by(.rule.security_severity_level)
          | map({severity: .[0].rule.security_severity_level, count: length})'
  

  Alerts located on app/vendor/composer/installed.json are Composer packages (fix by updating the dependency); those located on the image name itself are OS packages (fix by moving FROM, §3). A count that did not drop after a base-image bump means the published image was built from the old layers — check which commit the workflow ran on.

• The SourceForge download button in the notes points at https://sourceforge.net/projects/communitypasswo/files/<VERSION>/<VERSION>%20source%20code.zip/download — the archive must be uploaded there by the maintainer; the link 404s until then.

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Traps, in one place

Trap	Consequence
Committing the dev autoloader (app/vendor/composer/ after a plain composer install)	The archive requires dev files it does not carry ⇒ PHP fatal on every request, fresh installs and upgrades alike (Docker is spared). Gate check 10
Running the test suite after git checkout -- app/vendor/composer/	The production autoloader cannot load PHPUnit ⇒ Class "PHPUnit\TextUI\Application" not found, with the package present
Regenerating checksums before the last commit	files_reference.txt is stale ⇒ integrity check reports false mismatches
Forgetting app/files_reference.txt	The app reads that copy — the root file alone changes nothing at runtime
Regenerating with public/install/ renamed to install1	68 installer entries silently missing from the reference file (the script now refuses)
Bumping UPGRADE_MIN_DATE "by reflex"	Every installation is sent back through the upgrade wizard for a code-only release
Non-idempotent DDL in an upgrade_run_*.php	Scripts are all replayed every time ⇒ upgrade crashes on an installation already on that version
New setting seeded in the upgrade only	Fresh installs miss it (release gate check 8 warns)
New CREATE TABLE not registered in install.js	Fresh installs skip the table (check 9 warns)
rtk hiding merge commits	Release/merge structure looks wrong or missing — use git rev-list --merges
A path untracked on develop that master still tracks	git checkout master adopts the on-disk copy, the merge then deletes it from disk — pre-check with --diff-filter=D, restore with git archive | tar -x (§7)
Multi-line checksum pipeline inlined into bash -c	Syntax error on done \ — always use the script