release.md

Release

Staging Release

A staging release is automatically created on every merge to the develop branch.

The CI pipeline runs the following steps:

1. Bump dev version — increments the alpha version based on the latest version on TestPyPI
2. Build package — builds the Python package (requires a passing e2e test suite)
3. Publish package — uploads the package to TestPyPI

The staging release is installed nightly at 03:30 on the test server.

Production Release

A production release is triggered automatically when a version tag is pushed to main.

The tag is created by the CI pipeline on every merge to main:

1. Bump version — increments the version and creates an annotated Git tag
2. Tag push — triggers the deploy pipeline
3. Build & publish — builds the package and publishes it to PyPI
4. Create release — creates a GitHub release with changelog
5. Notify — sends a Mattermost notification

The production release will be installed on Fridays during the maintenance window.